Data surrounds us; it’s everywhere. Organisations depend on data to make crucial daily decisions, but their insight could be limited depending on the team and technology in place.
This is where data discovery can help.
Basics of Data Discovery
Data discovery allows technical and non-technical individuals to quickly and easily explore their organisation’s data (from an unlimited number of data points) to unlock insight that can help them make smarter decisions to assist the business in performing better.
Depending on the organisation’s market, this business intelligence could help improve efficiencies in a production line, unlock sales trends, help with fraud prevention, etc.
Without data, discovery imagines pulling endless data from tables (or spreadsheets!) and trying to determine what is happening.
This can be hugely time-consuming, repetitive, prone to human error and will only be a snapshot.
Data discovery isn’t a tool; it’s a process that a business user undertakes using visualisations built on advanced analytics to discover trends and patterns in an organisation’s data. The steps involved in this process are the data preparation stage, visual analysis and guided advanced analytics.
Your organisation’s data can be stored in many locations – from local servers, the cloud, different networks, CRM systems, finance systems, social media, etc.
Most organisations struggle to identify where their data is and even where their critical data is located!
A good brainstorming session with the IT team can help you identify and locate every data source in your organisation.
How To Discover Data In Your Business
Data has been discovered in a multi-step process where the needs are identified, working backwards from what data would be good to know. You can then combine data from the relevant sources; no single data source will tell you the whole truth.
Cleanse and prepare the data; this will help reduce the noise and give a clearer view of the analysis.
Analyse the data; this is where business leaders can extract the value from the multi-source data across the organisation and solve issues that can improve performance.
Finally, record the learnings and iterate. Data discovery is an ongoing and continuously improving process in which your organisation and leadership should invest.
Hopefully, you can see that data discovery is vital to ensure your organisation continues to grow and improve.
Conclusion
Digital Samurai would love to hear about your data discovery at whatever stage you are at.
We have experts on hand who can help with every step along the process and can help you extract insights across your organisation that could lead to massive performance increases.
Please feel free to get in touch with the Digital Samurai team today.