Four different Data and Analytics techniques

• Descriptive analytics answers questions like “What happened?”. For example, what was the revenue in December? This approach includes reporting tasks and working with BI tools.
• Diagnostic analytics goes a bit further and asks questions like “Why did something happen?”. For example, why revenue decreased by 10% compared to the previous year? This technique requires more drill-down and slicing & dicing of your data.
• Predictive analytics allows us to get answers to questions like “What will happen?”. The two cornerstones of this approach are forecasting (predicting the future for business-as-usual situations) and simulation (modelling different possible outcomes).
• Prescriptive analytics impacts the final decisions. The common questions are “What should we focus on?” or “How could we increase volume by 10%?”.