10 years ago
5 Types of Analytics in Business: One to Go After and One to Avoid

I have been lucky enough to work in some form of analytics for the past 15 years. In the last five especially, there has been an explosion in opportunities and applications as well as software tools. Lately, I have been thinking about the major types of analytics, and I don’t mean Business Intelligence versus Predictive Analytics. I mean, what are the analytics in services of? Below, I’ll cover categories that I find myself mapping projects and companies’ strategy to. One of these areas is relatively new and has a lot of promise. Another area is perhaps the origin of Big Data as a term in the mainstream tech press, but warrants caution from practitioners.

(Note: I am ignoring long-standing analytic application areas like engineering, finance, and insurance, and instead focused on the emerging areas in business contexts from consumer markets.)