Analyze and report

ANALYZE AND REPORT

Living in the era of digital technology and big data has made organizations dependent on the wealth of information data can bring. You might have seen how reporting and analysis are used interchangeably, especially the manner which outsourcing companies market their services. While both areas are part of web analytics (note that analytics isn’t similar to analysis), there’s a vast difference between them, and it’s more than just spelling.

It’s important that we differentiate the two because some organizations might be selling themselves short in one area and not reap the benefits, which web analytics can bring to the table. The first core component of web analytics, reporting, is merely organizing data into summaries. On the other hand, analysis is the process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling these summaries (reports) with the goal of highlighting useful information.

Simply put, reporting translates data into information while analysis turns information into insights. Also, reporting should enable users to ask “What?” questions about the information, whereas analysis should answer to “Why”” and “What can we do about it?”

Here are five differences between reporting and analysis: