Analytics: More a Need than a Buzzword

Analytics as a term has more often been used as a Buzzword in the last decade or so. So, do we assume that Analytics is more a fad or a fashion per se? I am afraid not.

Analytics has been there since the time data started to emanate. Think about it… Number of units sold, temperatures of different cities at the same time, temperatures of the same city at different times, number of units produced, gallons of fuel consumed across cities at a point in time, what is all this? Isn’t this all Data?

When was the first product sold ever? When was the first time the temperatures of different cities were recorded, let’s say in the early 1800s or even earlier? When was the first time temperatures of the same city were recorded at different points in time? When was the first batch of physical products produced and in what quantity? When was the? first time when the volume of fuel consumed across different cities at a point in time was recorded? All this was, is, and will be data.

Data in itself does not enable us or any decision maker per se to take any meaningful decision unless a context is present. Thus, numbers such as 1000, 10, 200, 75 are just numbers until we know that 1000 units sold were shipped on Jan 10, 2012 to a customer 200 miles away and the average speed at which the truck ran that day to deliver that order was 75 miles per hour.

Hence, until there is a meaning attached to data points, there is no information and thus, no decisions can be taken or reached in absence of information.

Coming back to where we started, Data has existed since the time such data started getting recorded for the first time. This, at a future point in time, gave birth to what we call Analytics, initially as Data Analysis, which was just understanding the trends and patterns presented by such data points. As time progressed, so did the capacity to store large volumes of data – such as physical drives, hard drives, cloud storage etc. and the computing capacity also increased, thus, giving birth to what we know as the yesteryear Data Analysis and became the base of modern day Analytics.

We will be coming with more content for our audience. Let us know your feedback in comments and keep watching Qualetics? and our LinkedIn page in general for more of such pieces.

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