Descriptive analytics tells us what happened. E.g. the monthly profit over a year. Combined with intuition this may provide the opportunity to support decision making.

Predictive analytics tells us what is likely to happen. E.g. the future monthly profit for the next year. This prediction could support better planning.

Prescriptive analytics automates decision making. E.g. the correlation between profit, economic indicators and development spend could be confirmed and understood. A model could use this to prescribe a development budget from current economic indicators to maximise profit.