ABSTRACT
Business analytics has been defined as the “the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models, and fact-based management to drive decisions and actions”. Complementary to this is the application of technology with the goal of exploiting data to understand and analyze business performance. Descriptive analytics is the most commonly used and most well understood type of analytics, which consists of categorizing, characterizing, consolidating, and classifying data. Predictive analytics uses the understanding of the past to make predictions about the future. Predictive analytics is applied both in real time to affect the operational process and in batch. Prescriptive analytics, based on mathematical optimization, is used to model a system of potential decisions, the interactions among these decisions, and the factors or constraints limiting the choices associated with the decisions.
