商业分析：商业分析是商业智能的一个分支，主要侧重于基于数据和统计方法准确而深入地了解业务绩效的能力。它充分而综合地利用分析建模和数值分析来促进准确的决策。它利用各种工具的优势，涉及数据分析、大数据处理和数据挖掘，以帮助管理人员做出适当的数据驱动决策。
预测分析：预测分析是数据分析的一个子集，它利用了包括机器学习和数据挖掘在内的各种统计技术和方法。它使用过去和当前的数据，对其进行处理，然后对未来和未知事件进行预测。它识别各种相似性和模式，发现不同维度或因素之间的关系，以评估潜在的机会和风险。
下表列出了业务分析和预测分析之间的差异：
| S.No. | Business Analytics | Predictive Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | It processes raw data into valuable information so that people can use it directly. | Raw data is first processed into structured data and then patterns are identified to predict future events. |
| 2. | It helps people to make decisions based on insights. | It helps businesses in various fields to make decisions based on data |
| 3. | It is the interpretation of historical data to understand changes that occurred in a business and draws comparisons. | It is the interpretation of historical data to predict unknown events by finding hidden patters by using complex algorithms. |
| 4. | It is used to know to know what had happened in the past of organisation’s operations. | It is used to know to know what will happen in the future or unknown events. |
| 5. | Type of data used is traditional and structured data along with manageable data sets. | It can use unstructured as well as complex data, or data which is either internal or external to the company. |
| 6. | Technologies include data mining, reporting, OLAP, dashboards, descriptive analysis, alerts, surveys etc. | Technologies include predictive modeling, forecasting, statistical analysis and machine learning. |
| 7. | It helps to solve a business issue, which includes some assumption-making and being dependent on individual experience. | It helps to detect complex patterns and creates a model that gives the better insights of what will happen in the future. |
| 8. | Using BA, people make better decisions with their insight, without the use of strong verification that they are correct. | Using PA, the model itself tells you the optimal decision to make using the insights from the data. |