Businesses may use reports and analytics to increase operational efficiency and production in a variety of ways.
Reporting is used to simplify difficult information by using reporting tools such as pie-chart, bar diagrams, and so on, while analytics comes after reporting since it involves understanding the presented data in order to make decisions.
Key Takeaways
- Reporting involves presenting historical data, while analytics involves interpreting data to identify trends and insights.
- Reporting provides an overview of past performance, whereas analytics supports data-driven decision-making and strategy development.
- Analytics utilizes advanced techniques like data mining and predictive modeling, while reporting relies on basic data visualization tools and summaries.
Reporting vs Analytics
Reporting is the process of gathering, organizing, and presenting accurate information meaningfully so that others can easily understand and interpret it. Analytics uses statistical methods to discover patterns or trends hidden within large datasets for prediction and analysis.
Reporting includes the process of collecting information on the events in detail, followed by, analyzing the impact of the event, thirdly, evaluating the data and facts, predicting the conclusion, and lastly, to conclude everything briefly.
It is a not-to-be-missed process in any report-needed field seeing that it keeps track of business performance over any period of time.
Analytics is one of the deal-breaking metrics in marketing optimizations, companies, banking agencies, software, security management, and many more.
On account of answering business questions, discovering relationships, predicting unknown outcomes, and automating decisions, analytics is key.
Primarily, there are four categories that assess analytics, namely, descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive.
Comparison Table
| Parameters of Comparison | Reporting | Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | Reporting is a deed that consists of required information/data and is presented in an organized way. | Analytics is the process of evaluating and analyzing summarised data in order to make decisions for a business. |
| Tasks | Reporting involves- Identifying business events, collecting required information, organizing, summarizing, and presenting the existing data. | Analytics includes- questioning the data, interpreting, exploring, and communicating to the end-users. |
| Objectives | Reporting indicates ‘what is happening’ in an organization. | Analytics depicts ‘why it is happening’ or ‘what is the reason behind the cause?’ |
| Importance | Reporting translates complex data into a piece of presentable information. | Analytics interprets the information and drive decision-making or recommendation to be done. |
| Users | Reporting is submitted to business heads in order to work effectively & efficiently in a business. | Data analysts, scientists, and business people employ analytics to take effective action. |
What is Reporting?
There are several fields that include reporting as a part of its process, starting from management to business, journalism, desk-work jobs, and any work that involves information and data to be recorded.
Reporting is the process of documenting a report/document that consists of all essential pieces of information to be presented to clients for substantial purposes.
Reporting has lately become a part of any business which aspires for success since it is what apes as the backbone of a business’s thinking and operations.
Reporting is a must-need metric for a business, as they present organized information one needs to perceive about the business.
In addition to it, the skills and ideas of professionals are neatly documented by reporting so in case of making a decision, it can be of great help.
Indeed, there is a certain number of steps to be followed in order to carry out perfect reporting.
the first and foremost step of reporting is deciding the purpose of the reporting, followed by conducting research, writing an outline(inclusive of title page, content table, introduction to the report, terms of reference, a summary of the process, findings, analysis, conclusion, and bibliography).
After laying it out for all the above-mentioned requirements, the first report is drafted, and subsequently, analysis, data findings, and recommendations are provided for editing.
What is Analytics?
However, Analytics is a systematically organized process that analyses the data and information of a business. Analytics is a way of discovering, interpreting, and communicating valuable patterns present in data.
To put it in simple words, Analytics is a process that tends to data analysis, but with the extensive use of computer skills, mathematics, statistics, and other descriptive techniques.
In this data-driven world, the analytics role plays a crucial part, from deciphering the hidden meaning speck in data to making decisions that could save many lives and time.
However, in terms of business, analytics are applied to study, predict, and improve business performance.
Analytics involves six procedures to analyze complete data- Data Requirements Specification, Data Collection, Data Processing, Data Cleaning, Data Analysis, and Communication.
At first, the data is taken as per the requirement of the specific type of experiment, in due course, the required data is accurately collected in order to process.
Meanwhile, the incomplete, error, duplicated data are removed to present as thoroughly analyzed data for keen analysis.
In the end, the result data is forwarded for reporting in order to help companies make better, more informed decisions and achieve a variety of goals for the benefit of the business.
Main Differences Between Reporting and Analytics
- Reporting is summarising existing data into presentable information, whereas, Analytics is interpreting the summarising data for decision-making purposes.
- There are various types of reporting such as Periodic reporting, functional reporting, formal/informal reporting, vertical & lateral reporting, long & short reporting, etc. On the other hand, there are four types of analytics such as predictive analytics, diagnostic analytics, descriptive, and prescriptive analytics.
- Reporting is a task of Identification, collection, summarization, and presentation. Albeit, Analytics is the task of question, interpretation, and communication to end-users.
- Reporting translates intrigue data into valuable information, but analytics is interpreted to make effective decision making.
- The purpose of reporting is knowing ‘what is happening’, meanwhile, the scope of using analytics is finding ‘the insights of what is happening.
- https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED132567
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743731514000057
Last Updated : 14 July, 2023
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Emma Smith holds an MA degree in English from Irvine Valley College. She has been a Journalist since 2002, writing articles on the English language, Sports, and Law. Read more about me on her bio page.
