Businesses use data in many different ways. Depending on the type of data at hand, companies can deploy several data management techniques. But the process always begins with efforts to prepare large volumes of raw data to feed insights.
This is where data discovery comes in. It allows businesses to cleanse and prepare data. In this article, we’ll explain exactly what data discovery is and the reasons your business needs a discovery database.
What is data discovery, and how does it work?
For many businesses worldwide, data is nothing short of the new oil. And using a discovery database can be a great way to mine and extract this oil. In data management, this extraction isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Company data often come from different sources and multiple formats.
Data discovery cherry-picks valuable insights to help break complex data down for data users. It has been in existence since the 1960s, with early data scientists and professionals calling it data fishing. Many data professionals didn’t consider data at the time because of the term’s negative connotation in managing data without any predetermined hypothesis.
It was essentially the case until the first international conference on data mining and knowledge injury in 1990. But the increasing adoption of neo-technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence has changed things a great deal. Data discovery is a never-ending process beginning with an objective, which helps paint a clear picture of what data types will be most helpful to their needs.
After identifying these needs, data professionals can extract and combine data from relevant sources. The next steps involve cleaning and preparing the data for efficient analysis. A huge part of the iteration in data discovery requires data professionals to record findings and outputs, which act as input that can be fed back into a new data discovery process.
Why do businesses need a data discovery database?
There are endless benefits your business can enjoy from having such a database. Some of them include the following:
1. Operational Agility
Business agility is the process of operating a business system that can generate solutions in real-time. Agile businesses require big data to create flexible and fluid business operations that can thrive. Agility is one of many data discovery perks which businesses can enjoy. The ultimate goal of data discovery is to create data-ready environments which allow for flexible operations and agile results.
Also, data discovery, with its enhanced access to relevant insights, allows for improved risk management and compliance. This has become even more crucial during today’s COVID-19 era. Experts envision a long way back to total recovery in a post-pandemic world. Data discovery alone is certainly not enough to facilitate your business’s recovery in the modern market. But it can make your business’s journey to recovery more manageable.
2. Decision-making
Data has improved corporate decision-making significantly. With business intelligence technologies leading the way, companies now access numerous data resources to support decisions. Data discovery affords decision-makers a bird’s eye view over its data. With advanced business intelligence (BI) systems, companies can monitor every customer query. That way, decision-makers can determine early signs and make amends with dissatisfied customers who want to jump ship.
3. Reduces IT expenses
The more comprehensive an organization’s data results are, the more welcoming and beneficial it can be for business members with a little technical background. Data discovery is a great way to clean and manage an organization’s data and make it more user-friendly and comprehensive. Such low code environments reduce the need for organizations to recruit technically advanced workers as data increases in volume and sophistication.
4. Operational Efficiency
Data discovery helps generate democratized data analytics and insights from multiple levels across an enterprise. These insights help businesses identify new opportunities for more competitive advantage. With its bird’s eye view features, data discovery can also help businesses identify wasteful areas and deploy real-time solutions.