What are Descriptive Analytics?
Descriptive analytics is the analysis of historical data to determine what happened, what changed and what patterns can be identified.
Considered the most basic type of analytics, descriptive analytics involves the breaking down of big data into smaller chunks of usable information so that companies can understand what happened with a specific operation, process or set of transactions. Descriptive analytics can provide insight into current customer behaviors and operational trends to support decisions about resource allocations, process improvements and overall performance management. Most industry observers believe it represents most of the analytics used by companies today.
What are Some Examples of Descriptive Analytics?
Business reports tracking inventory, conversions/sales and revenue – among other KPIs specific to the business – are all examples of descriptive analytics.
Teradata Take: A strong foundation of descriptive analytics – based on a solid and flexible data architecture – provides accuracy and confidence in business decision making. It also enables more advanced analytics capabilities, such as predictive and prescriptive analytics.