Business Analytics in Today's Business Environment

This article discusses the concept of business analytics and its significance in today's business environment. It explores how business analytics can help organizations make accurate decisions, achieve efficiency, and gain valuable insights. The article also provides a case study on Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and how they can use business analytics to gain a competitive advantage. References to relevant books and journals are included.

Business analytics

Contents
INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY.......................................................................................................................................2
Define Business Analytics and evaluate this in today’s business environment..................................2
Develop a model for Cincinnati Zoo so it can be used to gain competitive advantage......................3
REFERENCES....................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Business analytics refers to a process of collecting, analysing and storing data as well
as information that help a business to improve its efficiency (Hofmann and Klinkenberg,
2016). On the basis of these kind of practices, an organisation can easily increase its revenue
and growth opportunities. With the help of business analytics approach, an organisation can
utilize informations that make the company more competitive in order to sustain for a long
term in target market. In this process, operational department of firm play an essential role in
order to convert available data into valuable information. Main objectives of implementing
business analytical approaches is to investigate past business performance to gain insight as
well as drive business planning for future perspectives. The business analytical approach in
this project is based on Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden which is world’s top rated
zoological institution and a second oldest Zoo in the US. This report is going to determine
how business analytical approaches work as an effective tool in an organisation as well as
some identification of some methods that can assist to gain market opportunities. At last it
will also going to determine requirement of skills and employee performance in order to
manage appropriate tool that can aid to handle challenges related to big data.
MAIN BODY
Define Business Analytics and evaluate this in today’s business environment
In today’s world, each and every organisation wants to implement some evaluation
approaches that can assist in determining past working practices in order to make possible
changes to enhance future growth opportunities (Laursen and Thorlund, 2016). In this
process, business analytics play an essential role that can be used for descriptive analysis in
which data is utilized to understand past and present situation of firm. Major objective of
implementing such analysis is to assess current market position of organisation as well as
effectiveness of pervious business decisions. In respect of Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical
Garden, business analytical approach will assist in developing understanding of the available
primary and secondary data in more comprehensive manner. Major requirement of business
analytics in today’s environment is given below:
Helps in accurate decision making: Business analytics is essential for an
organisation as it helps to make business decisions process more accurate. In respect of
Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, this process will assist in data gathering of visitors, their

buying and weather forecasting. On the basis of this, management of firm can make accurate
decisions fir further business planning practices. On the basis of this decision, firm can
enhance sale of further services that can aid them to manage their financial budget in more
effective manner.
Helps in achieving efficiency: One major advantage of business analytics is to
consistently improving business efficiency (Vidgen, Shaw and Grant, 2017). This process lies
in the fact that it assist in gathering a large data at a faster rate and present it in visually
appealing way for business uses. In today’s business environment, organisation can achieve
specified goals with a better option that only matters how and where to take business. Thus, it
is required for organisation to implement business analytical practices in order to avoid risks
in the short and long term.
Helps in gaining valuable insights: One of the most specific advantage of business
analytics is to take a care of data that is presented to the analytics team. This determine
several options for firm as graphs, charts and so on that help to make an interesting decision
making for business growth. These kind of analysis practices determine past and present data
in synthesis and determined manner.
Develop a model for Cincinnati Zoo so it can be used to gain competitive advantage
Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is one of the largest zoological institution in US.
It is a non-profit organisation which gets annual budget from fundraising efforts as well as
remainder comes from food, gifts and admission fees. In order to increase revenue as well as
performance of the zoo, its management team embarked on an inclusive reviews of its
operational working activities. After that analysis, it has been analysed that the management
had a restricted knowledge of what was actually happening in the zoo, an appropriate detail
of visitors as who is coming to the zoo, how often and what they buy and do as well as total
revenue of Zoo. Thus in this regard, it is a required need in Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical
Garden to implement business analytics in order to manage business activities in effective.
Some of the actions are taken by management side but it is required for them to manage all
activities on the basis of Analytical process model. This processing involved steps in order to
turning data into information and decision. These activities are known as umbrella term that
considers the applications, best practices and tool that enables to access and analysis of
information to improve and optimize business decisions as well as performance. Steps of
Analytical process model are determine below as:

Identify business problem is the first step of this model that define a business problem
that needed to be addressed. In terms of Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden the major issue
in front of management is unstructured operational activities.
Identify data sources and Select the data is the next step in which management of
Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden requires to identify all source data that could be potential
interest.
Clean and transform the data is third stage in which management of Cincinnati Zoo &
Botanical Garden requires to transform all the data and information that they collected in
manual form.
After data transformation, next step is to Analyse the data which is based on results
that are obtained and are needed to be evaluated by business experts (Shmueli and et.al.,
2017).
Final stage of this model is Interpret, evaluate and deploy the model in which actions
are validated and approved by experts. At this stage, organisation can implement desired
changes that they are willing for. In terms of Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, these
consideration can be changes in business process in order to manage organisational
information and data in digitalized form so that required actions can be taken by management
at a time.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Hofmann, M. and Klinkenberg, R. eds., 2016. RapidMiner: Data mining use cases and
business analytics applications. CRC Press.
Laursen, G.H. and Thorlund, J., 2016. Business analytics for managers: Taking business
intelligence beyond reporting. John Wiley & Sons.
Vidgen, R., Shaw, S. and Grant, D.B., 2017. Management challenges in creating value from
business analytics. European Journal of Operational Research. 261(2). pp.626-639.
Shmueli, G. and et.al., 2017. Data mining for business analytics: concepts, techniques, and
applications in R. John Wiley & Sons.