The vital difference between business analytics and data science

Business analytics is specific to business-related problems like cost, profit, etc. whereas data science answers questions like the influence of geography, seasonal factors, and customer preferences on the business. Data science is the larger or superset of the two. Data science combines data with algorithm building and technology to answer a range of questions. Data science is the science of data study using statistics, algorithms, and technology whereas business analytics is the statistical study of business data.

Data science is a relatively recent development in the field of analytics whereas business analytics has been in place ever since the late 19th century. Data science involves a lot of coding skills whereas business analytics does not involve much coding.

Data science is a superset of business analytics. So, a person with data science skills can do business analytics but not vice versa.

Data science being a step ahead of business analytics is a luxury. However, business analytics is mandatory for a business to understand the working and gain insights.

data science analysis results cannot be used in the day-to-day decision-making of the company whereas business analytics is vital in management taking key decisions.

Data science does not answer a clear-cut question. The questions are mostly general. Business analytics, however, answers very specific business-related questions mostly financial. Data science can answer questions that business analytics can whereas not vice versa. Data science uses both structured and unstructured data whereas business analytics uses mostly structured data.

Data science has the potential to take leaps and bounds especially with the coming up of machine learning and artificial intelligence whereas business analytics is still taking slow steps.

Data scientists do not come across many dirty data whereas business analysts do. Data science depends to a large extent on the availability of data whereas business analytics does not. The cost of investing in data science is high whereas that of business analytics is low. Data science can keep pace with the data of today. Data has grown and branched into a variety of data. Data scientists are equipped with the right skills to deal with this. Business analysts, however, do not possess this.

Given the recent developments, both can expect a major shift in the way data is analyzed. With the rapidly growing data or big data, businesses will have the opportunity to explore different varieties of data and help the management make key decisions. This is just not a financial analysis but also an analysis of the role customer preferences, geography, etc. play in contributing to the growth of a company. Also forecasting data seems to be the order of the day. The management wants to know where they will stand a couple of years in the future so that they can make confident decisions.

In addition to the data and general trends, an important factor is skill learning.  Both offer employees a lot of scopes to learn and improve themselves. This learning is, in fact, a must in order to keep up with the recent developments. Gone are the days when analysis just involved statistics and survey data. Students and employees need to be versatile and constantly aim at learning new skills.  With changing data and learning trends, data science and business analytics opportunities can be considered hot openings. The opportunities that lay ahead are plenty.