Business Intelligence and Data Analytics

This book analyses the role of business intelligence and data analytics in the strategic optimisation of sales, recognising that today's competitive environment requires a shift from commercial decisions based solely on intuition to those underpinned by evidence. From both an academic and applied perspective, the book explores three complementary areas. Firstly, it establishes the conceptual foundations of business intelligence, business analytics and commercial analytics, with an emphasis on the use of KPIs, CRM, dashboards and sales-oriented performance metrics. Secondly, it examines descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics techniques to support business decision-making, integrating customer segmentation, purchase behaviour analysis and sales forecasting. Thirdly, it presents a reproducible practical case study based on a public dataset, accompanied by Python code and a concise alternative in R, so that readers can replicate the analytical workflow and adapt it to their own organisation.