The Essential Guide to Operational Analytics

by John Sanderson
person performing operational analytics

Did you know that data is super important for the success of any and all decision-makers? In fact, recent studies show that operational analytics is one of the core fundamentals to a company’s success.

 Yet did you know that many companies, while great at collecting data, are not using it to its full potential? This means that there is a ton of untapped data that likely exists out there for your business. But you aren’t yet using it to your full advantage.

When you are able to fully tap into the benefits that operational analytics are able to provide you with you will be able to help maximize their output and actually have it roll over to enhancing your current core business functionalities.

In the end, it really comes down to how efficiently and effectively you can use data analytics without having to rely on actual specialists and risk human error.

This is why we have put together the ultimate guide to operational analytics and all the reasons why your company should be maximizing the potential it can offer.

Defining Operational Analytics

So what exactly is operational analytics? In short, they are a series of data sets that can actually help enhance operational functionality.

For example, think about the time and energy it takes for one person to try to figure out how many staff you need for a certain shift. Or how many available rooms do you have at your hotel? Or how you can shorten the delivery time of a product.

When you have operational analytics fully utilized for your company, you will be able to enhance efficiency to levels that you could have only dreamed of earlier.

Operational analytics do not just help with those big business strategies. Instead, it uses its business intelligence to help with smaller and more tactical decisions that need to be the daily. It is really those operational decisions that can impact the long-term success and outcome of your company on the whole.

 It also means that with operational analytics, the marketing department would be able to use the tools set up to even build out campaigns that are driven by data.

 Overall, operational analytics are designed to deliver your business actual real-time data. This means that you can also get real-time data about your customers and start to understand their behaviors—especially when they are shopping around on your website.

How Operational Analytics is Set-Up

So how exactly are operational analytics set up and how can you tailor them to make sense for your company and goals? There are actually three main models used in operational analytics that you should know about so that you can select the right one and curate it to make sense for you.

1. Developed by Analytical Professionals

One of the most standard ways that many companies get their operational analytics set up is by an actual professional. You can always hire someone who is often regarded as a data scientist to build you your own operational analytics and have it organized into a range of analysis reports such as clusters, cohorts, and regressions. They will either be using a modeling tool or a scripting language.

2. Developed by Business Analysts

The second way in which you can get your operational analytics set up is by hiring a business analyst. They will be a bit easier to find and have an understanding at a deep level of the correlation between data and business results. But they usually do not have the advanced skills that an analytical specialist would have. Often, they use programs such as Tableau to set these up for you. 

3. Developed Through Automation

The third option is best and recommended if you are able to get the right software for your company. You can use certain software to actually build the models for you and you can easily filter down any constraints for them to run the analysis. This also means you can easily experiment and run different data sets until you find one that works best and makes the most sense. From there it will simply generate automatically for you to reference whenever you need it.

Essentials for Operational Analytics

There are some essentials that you do still need to successfully implement operational analytics.

First, you will need the right tools, such as an ETL so that you can pull data from various sources. You will also want to make sure you have a BI platform and other tools that can support you with data modeling and storage.

Next, you will also want in0memory technologies. This will allow you to store and pull big data sets easily with a minimal security risk.

 Finally, you will want to also have a decision service. This way you can get support in making the right decisions with the data sets you have.

Overall, operational analytics is something any business can have and implement for their own benefit.

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