Data is necessary to run your business, but it is more complicated than ever. The right data analytics solutions allow you to focus on making an impact with your data, instead of managing your data. Or worse–having an unmanaged data mess on your hands.
Read on to learn about analytics as a service, data anlaytics services, and data analytics consulting services and how they can help you make your data useful and valuable.
What is analytics as a service?
Analytics as a service (AaaS) is a service delivery model that allows companies to get the benefits of a data analytics platform and team, without having to hire a team or build their own data platform.
Companies can leverage the deep skills of data analytics service companies on an as-needed basis. Rather than buy and integrate many different tools, companies can benefit from a best-of-breed suite of tools already integrated.
Understanding the Basics of Data Analytics
What is a simple example of data analytics?
Data analytics refers to the general practice of systematically applying data analysis to inform and help make business decisions. If you download data to a spreadsheet to understand why sales are dropping, you are analyzing data.
If you then take that spreadsheet, share it with your company, and encourage regular decision-making that affects the sales process, you are performing data analytics.
What is self-service data analytics?
Many companies have to wait for specialists to manually compile reports. These reports are stale and static. Self-service data analytics allow anyone to access live data on demand. A good example is a live data dashboard that allows a person to explore the data in real-time.
What is Big Data?
Big Data refers to extremely large datasets that are difficult to manage and analyze using traditional data-processing software. In short, this is data that would be far too large for one computer to analyze on its own, think: gigantic spreadsheets that would crash my computer.
These datasets are characterized by their vast size, a combination of data sources, and mismatched data conventions that require joining before they can be acted upon.
The sheer size and complexity of big data make it a challenge for companies to process, yet when effectively analyzed, it can provide invaluable insights into customer behaviors, market trends, and operational efficiencies.
Given the complexities associated with big data, many companies opt to have external experts manage it. Handling big data requires specialized knowledge, advanced technologies, and significant computational power, all of which can be costly and resource-intensive to maintain in-house.
By outsourcing big data management, companies can leverage the expertise of specialists who are adept at navigating these complexities, allowing the business to focus on core activities and strategic decision-making. This not only enhances efficiency but also ensures that the data is used to its full potential to drive business growth and innovation.
Which leads us into what data analytic consultants do and the types of services they generally offer.
Data Analysts & Data Consultants Overview
What is a data and analytics company?
A data and analytics services company specializes in working with data to answer business questions, analyzing data to help make decisions, and providing services to make data useful and valuable.
What is the difference between a data analyst and a data consultant?
These roles can be fluid, depending on who you ask. Both roles provide data and analytics services. A data analyst is usually focused on analyzing data to answer questions or help people make data-driven decisions.
They often use tools like spreadsheets, python, or R to help in their task to get insights from the available data. A data consultant can be a broad term and is someone more focused on the process of how a business can use data to make an impact.
What is data analytics consulting?
Data analytics consulting consists of applying expertise in working with data to answer business questions and provide insights to decision-making. It also includes working with the underlying technology to centralize, cleanse, and leverage data for use in analysis.
What does a data analytics consultant/company do?
A data analytics solutions company provides services to help clients organize and analyze data about their customers and operations.
The services are a combination of using data to answer business-level questions; applying underlying technology to organize data reliably; and providing dashboards, reports, data shares, or other ways of exposing analyses to audiences who need them.
See our article What Does a Data Analytics Consultant Do? for a more in-depth explanation.
What are the advantages of analytics as a service?
True Analytics as a Service solves two main problems.
You Don’t Have To Hire In-House Staff
You won’t have to recruit, hire, pay, and manage a team of experts.
Have you counted the cost to hire, manage, and pay a data engineering and analytics team?
Instead, leverage a permanently assigned, fractional data crew of experts who know your business and know your data. You can scale them up or down depending on your needs over time.
A data crew covers any data analytics consulting services you need, from complicated technical tasks to analyses to help you get clarity and visibility.
Formal Service Desk Always Available
As a data and analytics services company, we work in partnership with our clients to provide them with a predictable, structured, and iterative approach to navigate the journey of necessary change in their organization. With a formal service desk as well as informal channels for collaboration, we are always available to them.
Data Architecture Built And Managed For You
You don’t have to build a data architecture yourself. Data analytics as a service comes as a platform that will run your data pipelines, notify you of any issues, and handle all the technology and infrastructure.
For a full examination of data analytics costs, see How Much Do Data Analytics Services Cost?
Breakdown of Analytics As A Service - The Individual Services Generally Included
Managed Analytics Services
Managed Analytics is the perfect balance of customization and pre-built data architecture. You get the benefits of all the products and tools already integrated and managed for you.
You decide which data assets you want created and managed for you. Your service provider will make sure all your self-service data analytics are automated, on time, and accurate.
The result? You finally have an organized inventory of data assets you can trust.
Generally, your managed service platform blends an automated infrastructure with modern cloud architecture. As a result, you benefit from fully automated data pipelines in addition to having data quality, security, cost, and performance constantly monitored.
Customer-Facing Analytics and Embedded Analytics
Many AaaS solutions include customer-facing and embedded analytics options. It provides you with a white-labeled, embedded dashboard that your customers can use whenever they want for data insights. You have complete control over the URL, images, texts, and CSS styles.
Embed Portals wrap around your preferred reporting or dashboarding tool. You maintain complete control by giving access to those who need it and allowing them to see only the data you specify.
Imagine creating a dashboard only one time that all your customers can see. They only see the data they are allowed to see, and they get self-service, on-demand, real-time access.
At Datateer, our data analytics services make embedding possible, without writing a single line of code.
Instant Analytics: Customer & Product Analytics
Having a solid data architecture to build customized Metrics is nice. But what if you could push a button and immediately start using common, standardized Metrics?
Instant Analytics is an analytics as a service offering for specific industries and business models. You can pick and choose from the data assets you need. These data assets include the Metrics already calculated, templated Dashboards ready to use, and pre-built integrations with the necessary Data Sources.
Data Warehouse Services
A cloud data warehouse is the foundation of modern data analytics. But the risk and complexity of managing one are real.
This big data analytics solution generally comes with best practices as a default setup and easy customization for your company’s needs. Services generally include access management, security monitoring, cost monitoring, and keeping everything organized following proven practices that work for businesses like yours.
Datateer, Offering Premium AaaS and Data Analytics Services
Whew, that was a lot of text to get you the basics of analytics as a service. In short, very few companies who want the insights from their data have the technical expertise to combine their own data sources, define metrics, build models for their KPIs, and create dashboard visualizations that can be understood by regular business users.
Luckily, Datateer exists to handle all your data analytics engineering needs. Leave the nerd stuff to us. Focus on the insights, we’ll handle the rest.