Reports vs Analytics

In today’s competitive business landscape, organizations are increasingly turning to analytics to give them the answers they need to make decisions with greater confidence. However, while the number of businesses taking advantage of analytics may be steadily increasing, the average person’s understanding of analytics remains vague.

So, what are analytics and how are they different from reports?

Lets discuss:
1. “Transactional and Operational” versus Insightful
The first significant difference between reports and analytics is the source of the data.

Your basic reports are run against the system in which the data was originally created, such as your HRMS, Learning Management System (LMS), or Accounts Payable system. These systems are transactional–or operational–meaning they are designed to help you efficiently perform certain tasks and keep records of those tasks. While these systems provide reporting options, it’s not their primary purpose.

“Reports provide data; analytics provide insight”
Take for example the hiring of a new employee. HR needs to create a record for that employee that captures their basic information, job title, and manager. This “hire” transaction–the creation of a core employee record–is performed in the HRMS. Once created, this record can then be accessed in other areas of the HRMS to perform new actions, such as benefits registration, IT provisioning, and payroll processing.

However, there’s no single record that includes every event or action for an employee–the system simply couldn’t operate if it had to access a giant file like this each and every time a user accessed an area of the system. Instead, the records of each transaction are split across the HRMS and only the ones necessary are accessed–a pay record here, benefits over there, and performance reviews somewhere else–each with a connection back to the core employee record, but not to each other.