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Analytic applications
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<p>Analytic applications are a type of business <a href="/facts/Application_software/YQuj7Kog">application software</a>, used to measure and improve the performance of business operations. More specifically, analytic applications are a type of <a href="/facts/Business_intelligence/ftThn7Wf">business intelligence</a>. As such they use collections of historical data about business operations to provide business users with information and tools that allow them to make improvements in business functions. </p><p>The maturity levels for business intelligence are: </p> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Operational_reporting/5qG8pMGv">operational reporting</a></li> <li>analytic reporting</li> <li><a href="/facts/Dashboards_(management_information_systems)/Vza1HUUn">business dashboards</a></li> <li>analytic applications</li></ul> <p>It may extend further to <a href="/facts/Predictive_analytics/tbqzk5qe">predictive analytics</a>, or predictive analysis may form part of the analytic application - depending on both the subject matter under analysis, and the nature of the analysis required. </p><p>Analytic applications are typically described as a subset of performance management. They specifically relate to the analysis of a business process (such as sales pipeline analysis, accounts payable analytics, or risk adjusted profitability analysis) in support of decision making. </p><p>To qualify as an application (rather than simply as a data warehousing tool), these tools should promote some form of automation. The maturity level of this automation is as follows: </p> <ul><li>reading data from a nominated operational system (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc.) into a data warehouse optimized for analysis (data led automation),</li> <li>reports, dashboards and scorecards based on that data structure (reporting led automation),</li> <li>what-if analysis and scenario-modeling (predictive or analytic led automation).</li></ul> <p>In most cases, these three levels are discrete functions, loosely banded together as a single product, and there is little automation of the process from end to end. </p>