Several terms like ‘Data warehousing’, ‘Business Analytics’, ‘Data mining’, ‘Business Intelligence’ and many more are used quite loosely and interchangeably in business discussions today.
While there are multiple interpretations for each of these terms, the general consensus is that these are all techniques that enable businesses to take correct decisions by leveraging operational data.
With that in mind, to understand the key distinctions between the two terms in question here – Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) – let us focus on how a ‘business’ generally works.