In the 21st century, data is everything. It can tell you what’s happening right now, and you can even use it to predict the future. However, you need to understand a few different processes in order to fully unlock the potential value of your data. Read on to discover how businesses can use data to improve performance.
Data science is the go-to process for working with massive quantities of data. Small businesses may not need to implement as much data science as a company working with petabytes of data. Simply put, data science looks for patterns in large datasets to help you make smart decisions and possibly determine the future through predictive modeling.
Data analytics and data science go hand in hand—in fact, they’re so connected that people often confuse the two processes. While data science is an umbrella term, data analytics gets into the finer details of scouring through data to find insights you can act upon. When you have a business hunch, you can turn to analytics to see whether you should go with your gut or hold off and let that particular feeling go.
Data isn’t always in the right place. Many small companies need to perform data migration as the first step toward more useful interactions with data. When you need to move your information from an old, outdated system to a new one, that process is known as migration. There are a few ways to do this, but the best way is slow and steady. This allows you to use your systems as the transfer happens instead of shutting everything down to move the data all at once.
Finally, data cleansing is essential for any company that works with information. Not all data is needed, and not all of it is useful, either. Cleansing finds redundancies and inaccuracies and purges them so your predictive models only use the best information.
Now that you know how businesses can use data to improve performance, consider getting a master data management system for your company. No matter your business's size, you can always leverage data to increase your sales and success.