Data analysing is not new, but the difference today is that vast amounts of information are available in real-time to us at a touch of a button. Accessing and analysing data is now a more efficient and accessible process, provided you have the right tools.
Previously, only historical data would have been available and meant that results, whilst useful, were less enriched and comprehensive. With this new availability of data, the sheer volume of data can be very difficult to filter through and identify what is valuable to the business versus the data that just sits there taking up loads of space. This is where data mining comes into play and provides the capability to help identify, analyse and make sense of data from multiple sources.
This ability to now utilise and harness your business data in real-time gives instant visibility into:
- performance
- costs
- trends
- insights
as well as creating powerful competitive advantages by helping to improve efficiency.
So what is data mining?
At the highest of levels, data mining is a set of software tools that start either a manual or automated process that simplifies complex searches of large, sometimes, siloed datasets. By making intricate queries and complex algorithms easy to use and available enables a wider audience to use them and obtain the results they want in a fraction of the time.
A data mining tool kit can include:
- Statistical Analysis
- Artificial Intelligence
- Machine Learning
- Pattern Recognition
- Database Management
- Database Warehousing
- Management Science
These type of tools provide granular results, which can then be cross-examined to discover patterns and/or trends to enable both tactical and strategical business decisions.
Biggest challenge
One of the biggest challenges that a businesses will face is data integrity, making sure that the data they have is accurate and up to date. However, with new cutting edge data mining tools they can investigate and provide crucial feedback on the accuracy and consistency providing reassurance, confidence and trust that the data is indeed appropriate and valid.
With that peace of mind one can now explore the unexplored, capture, filter, and interpret data in real-time, making business planning and satisfying clients, that much easier to achieve.
Many businesses that I talk to are sitting on lots of good data, but they do absolutely nothing with it. Contained within that data, are many great insights that could help the business find opportunities to reduce costs and make informed operational decisions. By understanding and utilising data, a business can harness significant return in investment on their time, providing insight into where they target business optimisation improvements and drive increased efficiency, productivity and people performance.
The #TimeSavingGurus can help you to undercover that data goldmine, get in touch with me at james.baker@tsg.je to discuss the options.