Best Business Analytics Books For Professionals in 2023

Do you know? Every day, a mass amount of data is generated by people (294 billion emails are shared within 24 hours), organizations, and things (refrigerators, watches, and televisions). Therefore, it is the job of an analyst to interpret and analyze the information. By deriving meaning from data, an analyst makes informed business decisions, and business analytics books help to understand better and derive insight.

 

For example, in the Finance world from setting standard reports, it has evolved into taking a strategic role in business by addressing a wide range of Business Questions by combining financial and operational data. The marketing world connects data from multiple social media channels, web, email, and mobile, and gives a comprehensive insight into how programs are performing. Before we delve into Books for Business Analytics, one must also have a good knowledge regarding the trending world of Analytics.

 

Table of Contents

• Why Business Analytics?
• Components of Business Analytics
• Business benefits through Business Analytics
• Skills Needed
• Business benefits through Business Analytics
• Books for Beginners
• Books for Advanced Learners
• Institutes offering online Business Analytics courses
• Frequently asked questions
• Conclusion

 

Why Business Analytics?

In today’s data-driven world, business analytics is becoming increasingly important across all industries. By using analytics to gain a competitive edge, organizations can stay ahead of the curve and thrive in a constantly evolving business landscape. Overall, business analytics is essential for organizations that want to make informed decisions and drive long-term success.

Business analytics can be used in a variety of ways, such as identifying trends and patterns, optimizing workflows, predicting outcomes, and mitigating risks. For example, an organization may use business analytics to identify customer preferences and behaviors, which can help them develop products and services that better meet its customers’ needs. Or, an organization may use business analytics to optimize its supply chain, reducing costs and improving delivery times.

 

Components of Business Analytics

• Data Collection: Collect relevant data from various sources, such as databases, spreadsheets, surveys, and social media.
• Data Cleaning and Preparation: Preparing and cleaning the data to remove any inconsistencies, duplicates, errors, and missing values.
• Data Analysis: Analyzing the data to identify patterns, trends, and relationships using statistical and mathematical models.
• Data Visualization: Visualizing the data using graphs, charts, and dashboards to communicate insights and findings.
• Business Intelligence: Using analytics tools and techniques to provide insights into key performance indicators (KPIs), such as sales, revenue, customer satisfaction, and market trends.
• Predictive Analytics: Using historical data and statistical algorithms to predict future trends and behaviors.
• Machine Learning: Developing algorithms and models to enable computers to learn from data and make predictions and decisions based on new data.
• Decision Support: Providing decision-makers with relevant information and insights to make informed decisions.
• Reporting: Preparing and presenting reports on business analytics findings to stakeholders and decision-makers.
• Data Security and Privacy: Ensuring the security and privacy of the data collected, stored, and analyzed.

 

Skills Needed

The business analytics field requires a combination of technical, analytical, and business skills. Business analysts must have a strong understanding of the industry and market trends. They should be able to understand the goal of a company and how analytics can support those goals. Some of the key skills needed for business analytics can be acquired by reading business analytics books such as:

 

1.   Data analysis: A thorough understanding of statistical analysis and data manipulation is essential for a business analyst. SQL, R, and Python are the tools often used, so familiarity with these tools is a given.
2. Communication skills: Business analysts need to be able to communicate their findings and recommendations to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. They should be able to clearly articulate complex ideas in a layman’s and concise manner.
3.   Critical thinking: Business analysts must be able to think objectively but also critically about data, identify trends and patterns, and make connections between different and various pieces of information.
4.   Problem-solving skills: Identifying a  problem and developing solutions that are data-driven and aligned with the organization’s goals are the necessary requisites of Business analysts.
5. Attention to detail: A keen eye for detail, and ensuring that the data is accurate, reliable, and consistent is a necessity.
6. Project management: They should also be able to manage projects, which includes defining project goals, timelines, and budgets, and ensuring that deliverables are within budget and met on time.
7.   Data visualization and storytelling: Business analysts must be able to present data in a way that is easy to understand and visually appealing. They should have a good understanding of data visualization tools and techniques. They should possess the art of telling compelling stories with data, and creating narratives that engage and inspire stakeholders.

 

Business Benefits Through Business Analytics

Business analysts play a vital role in helping organizations achieve their strategic goals by providing insights and recommendations based on data analysis. They help stakeholders understand the implications of different options, identify risks and opportunities, and select the best course of action.

By identifying inefficiencies in business processes, they recommend improvements that can save time and money. By streamlining workflows and eliminating bottlenecks, organizations can improve productivity and reduce costs.

Business analysts help organizations better understand their customers’ needs and preferences by analyzing customer data, they identify trends and patterns that help organizations create products and services that better meet their customers’ needs.

 

Listed below are some of the business benefits of having a Business Analyst on board.

 

Competitive Advantage: By leveraging data and analytics, organizations gain a competitive edge in their industry. Business analysts help organizations identify market trends, understand their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and develop strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

 

Improved Risk Management: Business analysts help organizations identify and mitigate risks, such as operational, financial, and regulatory risks. An organization can take proactive measures to mitigate risks and avoid costly mistakes.

 

Better Resource Allocation: The organizations allocate resources more effectively by identifying areas where investments are most likely to yield the greatest returns with the help of an Analyst. They can also help organizations identify areas where resources are being wasted and recommend ways to optimize resource allocation.

 

Also Read:

• Business Analyst Career
• Business Analytics Techniques

 

Business Analytics Books for Beginners

Business Analytics books are essential reading for professionals, students, and anyone interested in the intersection of business and data analytics. They provide a solid foundation for understanding how to extract valuable insights from data and how to use these insights to drive better business decisions.

 

1.”Data Analytics Made Accessible” by Anil Maheshwari

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to data analytics, including advanced topics such as deep learning, neural networks, and natural language processing. An excellent set of tutorials (for example, a tutorial for R ) is given in the appendix that will help you to get started doing your very first predictions.

 

2.“Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data”, by Charles Wheelan

Statistics is the foundational knowledge of every business analyst. Therefore, it helps them in understanding data. As suggested by many, this book is a great help for beginners and most importantly the technical concepts mentioned in layman’s language make learning easier.

 

3.“The Art of Statistics: How to learn from Data”, by David Spiegelhalter

The book written by the world-renowned Statistician shares the insights of his expertise and experience as a statistician to highlight the points. The book also speaks about how probability and statistics can be combined to make predictions, mathematical principles are used in statistics applying to data, correlation, causation, probability, regression, and Data visualization.

 

4.“Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals”, by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

The author herself says in her Data Radical podcast “ There is so much potential for the person who has strong technical skills and can speak about that in ways that can make others feel engaged and attentive. People will pay more attention to your data and what you do with it if you can talk to them about your data and what you do with it wants to keep participating.”

Understanding the importance of context, choosing an effective visual, what all to clutter away, and focusing on the audience’s attention are some of the important topics coved by the author. This book ranks among the Top Business Analytics Books.

 

5. “Practical Tableau: 100 Tips, Tutorials, and Strategies from a Tableau“, by Ryan Sleeper

Ryan Sleeper is a Tableau Zen Master, Tableau Iron Viz Champion, and Tableau Public Visualization of the Year author. The sections of the book include Fundamentals, step-by-step tutorials to build a variety of charts (how to make beautiful bar charts), Tips and tricks – how to make your Tableau workbooks run efficiently, learning line graphs, leverage psychological schemas to improve data visualization and Framework – explores the INSIGHT framework, a proprietary process for building Tableau dashboards.

 

6.“Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die”, by Eric Siegel

The book goes way beyond marketing and speaks about how predictive analytics helps predict human behavior thus helping reduce risk and boost sales, cut costs, improve healthcare, streamline manufacturing, and even win elections and toughen the fight against crimes.

 

7.“SQL in 10 Minutes”, Sams Teach Yourself by Ben Forta

The author has distilled the most pertinent basic SQL concepts into simple, easy-to-read form. Befitting its “10-minute” cognomen, this is a book for new SQL programmers. But it’s also mildly different in a way that will particularly suit people coming into SQL for the first time as part of their involvement in using web database development tools (ColdFusion and Active Server Pages).

These Business Analytics books are widely regarded for their clear explanations, practical examples, and accessible writing styles.

 

Find here the best: Business Analytics Courses in India

 

Business Analytics Books for Advanced Learners

Advanced learners might be interested in expanding their knowledge and skills in business analytics. Listed below are some excellent sources of Business Analytics books to expand their horizons.

 

1.” Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight” by John W. Foreman

The book takes the reader through the calculations, first in Excel so one will initially understand how they work and then at the end explains how to achieve the same thing in R in 3 lines.  it’s a good first book that will help decipher what techniques one needs that are more specific to one particular domain. It also covers naive Bayes (a supervised machine learning technique) and triple exponential smoothing (a forecasting technique).

 

2.”Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking” by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett:

This book is an excellent resource for advanced learners interested in learning how to use data science and analytics to drive business decisions. This book explains how data science can be applied in a business context. Gives the history of data science going back to the 80s, how data science was used in Banking, even before Data science was called Data science. A technical book that dives into explaining data mining techniques used today.

 

3.“The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World” by Pedro Domingos:

This book explores the concept of a master algorithm that can learn from any data and solve any problem, providing insights into the future of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The overall point of the book is that there is evolutionary thinking going on in writing smart algorithms which can let the data speak for themselves and computer scientists have a toolbox of techniques that enable real objective knowledge that is needed to be extracted from the data.

 

4.”Python for Data Analysis” by Wes McKinney

This book is an excellent resource for advanced learners interested in using Python for data analysis and includes topics such as data manipulation, visualization, and machine learning. Its section on IPython is good and it explains Numpy exceptionally well: two chapters are completely dedicated to Numpy covering the basics and advanced topics.

It helps you to visualize numpy arrays. The Pandas coverage is excellent and you learn what a powerful tool Pandas can be. If you are new to data analysis and are looking for an introductory book to explain how to do it in Python, there is no better one than this.

 

5.”Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques” by Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, and Mark A. Hall

This book provides a practical guide to data mining and machine learning techniques, including advanced topics such as ensemble methods and feature selection and practical examples for machine learning. Sections of the book include Applications, Algorithms, Cost Calculation, Classification, Clustering, Knowledge Representation, Prediction, and Linear/Logistic Regression.

The last part of the book includes a  WEKA user guide which is Combined with some useful datasets such as the UCI, which is a good set to start learning data mining.

 

6.”Big Data Analytics: From Strategic Planning to Enterprise Integration with Tools, Techniques, NoSQL, and Graph” by David Loshin

This book explores the strategies and tools necessary for successful big data analytics, including advanced topics such as graph analytics and NoSQL databases. Big Data Analytics assists managers in providing a run-through of the drivers for introducing big data technology into any organization also for understanding the types of business problems applicable to big data analytics solutions, understanding the value benefits and drivers, developing a pilot, strategic planning, and planning to amalgamate back into production within the enterprise.

 

7.”Applied Predictive Modeling” by Max Kuhn and Kjell Johnson

This book provides a comprehensive guide to an intuitive description of predictive modeling techniques, including advanced topics such as ensemble models and feature selection, and provides data and software sets through which readers can reproduce the work.

These Business Analytics books for Advanced learners are widely regarded for their clear explanations, practical examples, and accessible writing styles. Now that you are familiar with Business Analytics Books, as an analyst, there are various technical tools that you can use to analyze data, create reports, and communicate insights to stakeholders.

 

Some of the Most Commonly Used Technical Tools for Business Analysts Include: 

Spreadsheet software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are popular examples of spreadsheet software. With these tools, you can organize and analyze data, create charts and graphs, and perform various calculations.

Business intelligence (BI) tools: These tools help you to analyze data and create interactive visualizations and reports. Popular examples of BI tools include Tableau, Power BI, and QlikView.

Statistical analysis software: Tools like R, SAS, and SPSS are commonly used for statistical analysis. With these tools, you can conduct more complex data analysis and create predictive models.

Data visualization software: Tools like D3.js, Ploty, and ggplot2 are used for creating advanced and interactive data visualizations. 

Proficiency in these technical tools can help Business Analysts to work more efficiently and effectively, and deliver high-quality insights to stakeholders.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

1. What are some business analytics books for advanced learners?

Answer: Some books on business analytics for advanced learners include “Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython” by Wes McKinney

“Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques” by Jiawei Han, Micheline Kamber, and Jian Pei, and

“Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think” by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier.

 

2. Are there any business analytics books for specific industries?

Answer:  Yes, there are books on business analytics for specific industries. For example, “Marketing Analytics: A Practical Guide to Improving Consumer Insights Using Data Techniques” by Mike Grigsby focuses on using analytics for marketing, while “Healthcare Analytics Made Simple: Techniques in Healthcare Computing Using Machine Learning and Python” by Baha Al-Shaikh and Aarthi Eashwar focuses on analytics in healthcare.

 

3. Are there any business analytics books on business analytics case studies?

Answer: Yes, there are books on business analytics case studies. Some examples include “Business Analytics Case Studies” by Dursun Delen, “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning” by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris, and “Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking” by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett.

 

4. What are some books on data visualization for business analytics?

Answer: Some good books on data visualization for business analytics include “Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring” by Stephen Few, “Data Visualization Toolkit: Using JavaScript, Rails, and Postgres to Present Data and Geospatial Information” by Barrett Clark, and “Effective Data Visualization: The Right Chart for the Right Data” by Stephanie D. H. Evergreen.

 

5. Is there a good book on business analytics for beginners?

Answer: Some good books on business analytics for beginners include “Business Analysis For Beginners by Mohamed Elgendy.

 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, books are a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding the principles, techniques, and applications of data analytics in business settings. Business Analytics books cover a range of topics such as data mining, machine learning, statistical analysis, and data visualization, and provide practical guidance on how to use analytics to solve real-world business problems.