Our digital universe is growing at an exponential rate. With the turn of the new year, 2019 promises some exciting advancements and improvements to many technological fields. Data mining and business intelligence (BI), both of which are extremely valuable to businesses, represent key areas of growth. Even though these terms are used interchangeably, data mining and business intelligence are two separate areas within the spectrum of data technologies.
In a previous article, we’ve written about the detailed differences between data mining and business intelligence, as well as the techniques involved in both and their various uses. To quickly recap, BI is used to provide insights about both your own company and others such as rivals or business partners. It involves collecting and often processing large volumes of data, whether it be through your own internal metrics or third-party resources. On the other hand, data mining is the process of analysing data to identify useful patterns and insights. The software involved allows companies to analyse information from multiple sources to find trends.
In layman’s terms, BI will analyse raw data and transform this into useful, actionable information as required by a particular business. Data mining, as the name suggests, is the actual mining of useful information. A major difference between the two is in the form of style. Where BI usually uses metric tracking to gain insight, data mining uses computational intelligence and algorithms to uncover useful patterns. Thus, BI provides insights that greatly aid decision-making, while data mining can give answers to more specific and smaller-scale questions.
In this regard, data mining capabilities today are often used to fuel business intelligence. An article by the Villanova School of Business states that Big data becomes business intelligence when it’s employed to spot opportunities and make well-informed decisions about the future of a company. There are many steps along the way to turn raw data into useful intelligence. Most importantly, to maximize the benefits yielded from data mining, it is integral that leaders clearly understand why and how the information gathered matters, as well as how to properly utilize it in managerial and operational decisions.
With data mining and BI acting as the backbone of most successful businesses today, it’s time to hop on the bandwagon if you haven’t already. Trends from late 2018 show that data tech is set to become even more widespread this year. Let’s talk about some major trends to watch out for in 2019:
Artificial Intelligence
2018 was dominated by the use of artificial intelligence (AI), with research showing that 38 percent of businesses have already implemented AI in some way. Companies that have not adopted AI risk falling behind and then playing a constant game of catch-up. Enterprises will use AI to collect and process data, and this technology will only become more capable of data mining as time goes forward.
AI platforms are known to evaluate data inputs much faster than humans, as well as notice things that are often missed by the human eye. While skeptics might label the role of AI in data and intelligence as a temporary fad, statistics show that this is simply not the case. Rather, the use of AI in collecting, analyzing, and storing data is likely to increase in 2019.
Self-Service BI
An article on Smart Data Collective states that self-service BI interfaces will gain popularity in 2019. Self-service BI allows for a company to directly dive into analytics without having to bring on an external data scientist. The article quotes a study from Gartner, which predicts that self-service BI will produce more analysis information than data scientists by 2019. This software can be especially useful for smaller businesses, which do not always shave the budget to hire external help.
A relatable example of self-service BI on a smaller scale is Insights by Google My Business. Chatmeter states that The Insights panel found within your GMB dashboard provides businesses owners with customer engagement data derived from their GMB listing. Insights provide a vast amount of data on everything from how many views a listing has and how customers interact with listings to location data and phone call volumes. Its intuitive interface allows business leaders to make use of data and analytics without turning to specialized help.
Thus, self-service BI is set to help both smaller and larger businesses through 2019. It is important to note that the key to maximizing benefits of such software lies in first evaluating what you hope to learn from BI and where data insights fit within your company’s processes.
Data Retention
According to an article on Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s blog, this year will see significant improvement in data retention policies. While most companies need to store their data for backups for a certain amount of time, it’s unlikely that they need to hold on to it forever. Machine learning is being taught to clean stored data and even dispose of data that is no longer needed. As the article puts it, You can think of it as an automated courtesy data flush.
Data Governance
Smart Data Collective also highlighted the importance of data governance in 2019, quoting a poll of more than 2,600 respondents that showed data governance as something that has above-average importance in their work now and would through 2019. Depending on the industry, the emphasis placed on data governance differed, with banking and telecommunications placing more importance on the same.
Data governance is crucial for any business or industry that hopes to gain valuable insight through its data and BI efforts. As stated in the Smart Data Collective article, If the data collected contains duplicate or inaccurate information, the poor quality could cause a lack of confidence in company leaders, making a focus on business intelligence no longer worthwhile.
In this way, data governance is extremely important in the healthcare industry too, where inaccurate and/or compromised data can have severe medical and legal repercussions. Experts at Duquesne University write, As more data is moved onto remote servers and AI steadily improves, the healthcare industry is beginning to understand that medical data will soon be moved into Big Data space. HIPAA and privacy concerns are slowing the process, but cybersecurity innovation is progressing alongside Big Data and will be fully capable of protecting sensitive medical data.
Additionally, with the General Data Protection Regulation now in effect all over Europe and similar regulation policies coming into effect in California in 2020, businesses cannot afford to overlook data governance. Thus, 2019 will see an emphasis placed on governance and compliance with applicable laws.
As 2019 progresses, these trends in data mining and BI should become more apparent. One of the most important aspects of BI and data success is preparation. So if you haven’t already, there’s no better time than now to capitalize on these trends and prepare for the coming year.
