Business Intelligence vs Business Analytics: Differences in India

A lot of companies use dashboards for understanding their businesses. There between dashboards and business analytics. Business intelligence vs business analytics is about understanding what happened in your business and finding out why it happened or what might happen next. Let's have a look at some survey findings and how to choose the right option for your business.

What an India survey found

According to a NASSCOM community article that was published in June 2026. It shared some points from an ARC Advisory Group survey of Indian businesses. As per this survey, companies used intelligence and analytics for:

• Preparing reports faster and more accurately.
• Improving business planning.
• Making better decisions.

There are some common problems also:

• 30% said analysing large amounts of data was their biggest challenge.
• More than 25% said their data was spread across different systems.
• Connecting new tools with existing systems was a huge problem.

The article also suggested using predictive analytics more widely. There are some points to remember. The survey was from 2016, so it may not reflect the current situation. A lot of respondents worked at large companies with almost 5000 or more employees. The survey has nothing about the companies that used basic reporting compared with predictive analytics.

Business intelligence vs business analytics: the difference

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence uses reports and dashboards to show business results. For example, it can show:

• Sales last month.
• Stock available in each warehouse.
• Tickets closed by each team.

This provides help to businesses understand their present performance and past results.

Business analytics

Business analytics checks data deeply. It helps businesses find patterns, understand problems, and predict possible results. Like, this can help you with estimating future sales, understanding why sales have dropped or comparing business plans. It also needs reliable data and some people who know how to analyse it. It is not possible for forecasting to be always correct.

These both can work well with each other. You have to be sure the reports are correct. After this, use analytics to answer questions and improve decisions.

What to ask before you invest

Ask these questions before choosing a solution.

• Which business decisions do we want to improve?
• Is our data stored in one place or across different systems?
• Who will check that the data is correct?
• Do we need a report, a forecast, or a recommendation?
• How will we measure the results after six months?

If your data is in multiple systems, start by collecting it all in one place. Incorrect data can lead to wrong decisions.

How We Approach Business Intelligence vs Business Analytics

Our Data Analytics service covers six areas:

• Business intelligence and data visualisation.
• Big data.
• Predictive and prescriptive analytics.
• Customer analytics.
• Data warehousing and integration.
• Data governance.

We help businesses with the right choice. For a lot of companies, this means bringing data together first, then building reliable reports and after that using analytics to predict future results.

While helping with choosing between business intelligence and business analytics, we first understand what changes they want to improve. Then we identify the tools and data for supporting those decisions. If your team is comparing business intelligence with business analytics, we’d be happy to discuss your needs and help you choose the right approach.