Big data analytics is the often-complex process of examining big data to uncover information such as hidden patterns, correlations, market trends and customer preferences that can help organizations make informed business decisions. On a broad scale, data analytics technologies and techniques give organizations a way to analyze data sets and gather new information. Business intelligence (BI) queries answer basic questions about business operations and performance.

Big data analytics is a form of advanced analytics, which involve complex applications with elements such as predictive models, statistical algorithms and what-if analysis powered by analytics. Data analysts, data scientists, predictive modelers, statisticians and other analytics professionals collect, process, clean and analyze growing volumes of structured transaction data as well as other forms of data not used by conventional BI and analytics programs.