Data Analytics and Business Intelligence

<p>Business Analytics (BA) is an evolving phenomenon that showcases the increasing importance of using huge volumes of data to generate value for businesses. Advances in BA have offered great opportunities for organisations to improve innovate and develop existing or new processes products and services. BA is the process of transforming data into actionable insight by using statistical and mathematical analysis descriptive prescriptive and predictive models machine learning information systems and network science methods among others along with a variety of data expert knowledge and fact-based management to support better and faster decision-making.</p><p>BA and Business Intelligence (BI) generate capabilities for companies to compete in the market effectively and has become one of the main functional areas in most companies. BA tools are used in diverse ways for example to identify consumer behaviour patterns and market trends to derive valuable insights on the performance of stocks to find information on the attrition rate of employees to analyse and solve healthcare problems to offer insight into inventory management and supply chain management to analyse data from social networks and to infer traffic behaviour and develop traffic management policy among others.</p><p>BA and BI have become one of the most popular research areas in academic circles as well as in the industry driven by the increasing demand in the business world. This book aims to become a stimulus for innovative business solutions covering a wide range of aspects of business analytics such as management science information technology descriptive prescriptive and predictive models machine learning network science mathematical and statistical techniques. The book will encompass a valuable collection of chapters exploring and discussing computational frameworks practices and applications of BA that can assist industries and relevant stakeholders in decision-making and problem-solving exercises with a view to driving competitive advantage.</p>