How Effective Data Mining Is Useful for Business Intelligence

Running a proper business has proven itself to be an ever-evolving topic. Therefore, it’s essential to stay on top of the competition and guarantee that you and your corporation have a positive upwards flow.

There have always been snake oils and methods that promise further business advancement and prosperity, yet only a couple of different techniques are tried and tested. Every single corporation can benefit from analyzing the data they’re given.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence is the strategy, process, and technology used by corporations to further analyze their business data. Business intelligence (BI) has been in effect ever since the dawn od business, in one way or another.

With the advent of the internet, there is quite a lot of data you could further analyze. It will give you a better picture of your consumers, thus allowing you to better cater to their requirements.

BI is integral to business prosperity and is a sure-fire way to get an edge over the competition. You are using the proper methods to gather as many pieces of data as you can is an instrumental part of the business intelligence process.

What is Data?

Data is every single piece of information that you have gathered either by yourself or mechanically.

Data can be acquired through various means and accumulating as much data as possible is a great option. More data means you have a broader perspective of the issues and improvements you could implement within your corporation.

There are various ways to collect your data, depending on the type of business you’re running or the kind of data you want to accumulate.

Data Mining

Data mining is the simple process of collecting data within a larger mainframe. It helps you discover different patterns in large amounts of data, known as raw data.

While collecting as much raw data as possible is integral to the process, the raw data itself is pretty much useless.

Think of it as a gold needle in a haystack. You are provided with a huge opportunity, yet you need to filter out the less important parts to get to the treasure.

It’s basically how data mining functions. It removes the “fluff” and only leaves the things you could use to improve your business.

Data collection is the process of collecting all forms of data. There are two basic methods of data collection, qualitative and quantitative.

While quantitative data collection might be an easier process and require a simpler set of skills, it provides you with a lot of raw data.

Quality data collection, on the other hand, is a much tougher and longer process, but it gives you exactly the information you need.

What is Data used for?

Raw data is mostly used only for refinement into quality data, which is later used for:

• Statistical Purposes
• Analytical Purposes
• Feedback and Gathering Analysis
• Product Improvement
• Increasing ROI
• Increasing SERPs
• Improving Ranking

Where is the Data stored?

All the data a business has is stored in something known as a data warehouse. It’s rich with raw data, awaiting further refinement.

Storing data this way is beneficial, as data warehouses operate on several different levels. You’re not going to mix raw and refined data, as that would be time-consuming and generally unproductive.

Storing your data in numerous different data warehouses ensures that you always have both the bulk data and important specific data on hand.

Refining your data is a process that extracts beneficial data from your raw data, further storing it in a special section of your data warehouse.

How beneficial is Data Mining For Business Intelligence?

As mentioned before, the BI process consists of data analysis. Data analysis is best accomplished if you have a lot of data to work with and gathering said data is a process on its own.

Data analysis might not be a short or simple process, but it is vastly simplified and sped up when you collect the correct data.

While there are quite a lot of data mining tools available for different types of business, they all boil down to the quantity/quality question.

Data mining in business has been around for a while, and since it has been digitalized, the whole process has delved into new depths of complexity.

If businesses want to gain an edge over their competition and utilize the full potential of data, they need to refine it to the purest possible state.

Critical business decisions aren’t made through observing the transaction fees, tax expenses, and numerous other forms of data that businesses store.

Business intelligence Infographic 10 steps template.data mining, knowledge, visualization, decision simple icons

What does the future hold for Data Mining?

Data mining is not a perfect process, at least not yet. The collection of data primarily consists of raw data and further refinements.

While it has seen some significant improvements from its implementation in BI and BP, the data mining, analysis, and extraction process has quite a long way to go until it is perfected.

In a couple of short years, we’re going to start noticing all the benefits proper data mining has been giving the corporations we interact with daily. Corporations will be able to understand the consumer better and make better business decisions.

How Ethical is the Data Mining Process?

When it comes to the moral and ethical compass of the data mining process, it boils down to how the information is acquired. If the information or “data” is obtained organically, we can rest assured that there is no shady business going on.

Data handling and acquisition methods are currently located within the legal gray area. Since data mining and data holding are both relatively new concepts (in the eyes of the law), their subsequent regulation is yet to arise.

Generally, mining, handling, and manipulating user data without prior notification is seen as a breach of personal privacy. Numerous companies (the most notable of which is Facebook) have come under fire for doing this. But, is there a legal response to these issues?

While the EU has adopted some data handling and acquisition laws, they still have quite a long way to go. The legality of data mining and ethical liability are things that are yet to arise in modern society. As data manipulation is only rising in popularity, the legal, moral, and ethical answers will result accordingly.

How Do We Prepare For This?

The age of data is already upon us. But, the time to prepare isn’t over yet. Since data mining is a technology that is continuously improving, we still have more than enough time to prepare for it.

Preparing for data mining popularization is reasonably simple, and is mainly associated with your wants.

Say you’re looking to protect all of your data, and you don’t wish to risk any accidental participation in any possible data-mining operation; the options are already available. VPNs have been a thing for quite some time now, and have only skyrocketed in popularity in recent years.

VPNs protect all of your data and evolve their encryption and protection standards on the daily.

If you don’t have any problem with data mining operations and are actively looking to enhance your time on the internet, you’re already participating. Numerous programs, corporations, and services already mine your data.

This mining process helps them suit your needs better, thus improving your browsing experience.

Every single service, company, or corporation has to state their business beforehand. If you’re picky about who you want in your data, make sure to read the license agreement before you accept anything. It might sound straining, but it can save from any unwanted data-mining in the future.