Big Data / Data Mining in business

This is the technology that stores and processes data from sources both internal and external to your company. Big Data usually refers to the immense volumes of data available online and in the cloud, which requires ever more computing power to gather and analyze. Because the sources are so diverse, the data is often completely raw and unstructured. Since you’ll probably be using this data for purposes it wasn’t originally intended to serve, you’ll have to clean it up a bit before you can garner any useful insights from it. 

The systems you put in place internally to track KPIs are obviously the main source you turn to when you need to answer a question about your business, but Big Data makes available almost limitless amounts of information you can sift through for insights related to your industry, your business, your prospective customers. Big Data is the library you visit when the information to answer your questions isn’t readily at hand. And like a real library it allows you to look for answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.  

Finding answers you didn’t know you were looking for beforehand is what Data Mining is all about. With so much information available, you can never be sure you’re not overlooking some key fact pointing the way to better performance. Data Mining is the practice of sifting through all the evidence in search of previously unrecognized patterns. Some companies are even hiring Data Scientists, experts in statistics and computer science who know all the tricks for finding the signals hidden in the noise. Data Mining probably fits within the category of analytics, but most analytics is based on data from systems set up to track known KPIs—so it’s usually more measuring than mining.     

One of the difficulties in keeping all the terms straight is that there are tools that bring together elements from all of the categories. Power BI, for instance, is obviously a BI tool, but it allows business users to analyze, visualize, and share data in a multitude of ways. You can also use the analysis and visualization functions with information you pull in from the cloud, so it’s an example of Big Data. In the end, though, it’s not as important that we apply the proper labels to everything as it is that you have an effective way to gather and use information to keep your business growing and thriving.