Combining Data for Better BI

Business analysts have been bombarded with the term big data for several years, but understanding the power of data and bringing that power to bear on business intelligence are two different matters. One obstacle between understanding and implementation is that most organizations simply aren’t in a technical position to process the overwhelming amount of data that users, consumers, and businesses generate today. A solution to this obstacle is combining external data and technology with transactional data.

When the Work Is Done for You

Depending on your industry, part of your data capture and analysis work may already be done through public data sets. Census data, social media tools, 911 data, weather files, and government analysis from agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics all provide easy access to structured data that could be relevant to your endeavors. In the world of big data, when work is done for you, take advantage of it in your own analysis.

Reducing On-Cost Data Expenses

Cloud-based data analysis products have evolved quickly in the last few years. Not only can organizations take advantage of reporting and analysis functions built into almost every web service or ERP, but they can also reach for larger data pools and more robust data functions through cloud-based offerings such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Cloud-based data tools reduce heavy burdens on client-side server and IT staff while making data collection and review more efficient.

Leveraging the Crowd

Big data is, by its nature, unclean. It’s unstructured and messy, and analysts that have to slog through enormous amounts of such data can become bogged down in minutia. Crowd services let companies pass data through tasks such as categorization or tagging to create structure—by leveraging hundreds or thousands of online workers across the globe, companies can clean up data in days at a very low cost.

Combining your own transactional data, housed in products such as GP, CRM, or AX, with organized data points from outside sources helps your analysts maximize business intelligence with minimal in-house resources.

Source:  Tech Radar