Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence, Management Information, Data Analytics and Data Warehousing have been business buzzwords for some time but more and more organisations are recognising the value and opportunities that exist in the data that they already have or already collect. This does however have to be done sensitively, particularly when using personal information (a powerful example of this need is the example of how US retailer Target uses its data to identify pregnant women through their buying habits (New York Times Article). The old saying about gaining a single version of the truth is very much a driver for the implementation of a data warehouse…If you or others within your organisation are still saying things like “Well if I had the data to know then we could …”, or “Well those aren’t the figures that I have”, then you really need to look at your Business Intelligence Strategy.

Big Data?

Big Data is a newer buzz word, and has gained more popularity as organisations have increased the amounts of data they capture, retain and want to analyse, along with the increasing trend to join many internal and/or external data sources together to make connections that haven’t previously been possible, or have previously required more processing power than was available. With the dramatic increase of data sources available many of which have a cost associated with them, but some of them are free (Leading Market Technologies list a number of free ones detailed here), allowing disperate and previously unconnected trends to be identified.

Where do I Start?

If you haven’t got a data warehouse or a Business Intelligence strategy, or perhaps you’re looking to improve your current system, the following steps will be things that need to take into account:

What are the business objectives for the data?
What is the information you want to extract from the data?
What are the KPI that drive your business?
Understand the data that you collect
Understand the data that you have
Understand the data you can buy or access from external sources
Understand any legal or license limitations that there may be on your data sources including
Data protection legislation if processing personal identifiable information
PCI if you’re processing credit card information (in short we recommend that you don’t include credit card numbers or CV2 data in your data warehouse)
Solvency II
Sarbanes Oxley
Understand (and review) your data retention policy

Is Big Data for me?

These days there is more data captured, with more being made available (either free or at a price) that all organisations no matter how big or small should be considering what Big Data and Business Intelligence means for them. [b]Your Next Steps[/b] If you’re not confident that your big data, business intelligence approach is suitable for your business requirements, or perhaps you need help with data retention you need to take prompt action. At Fifth Step have vast experience in this field, and we’re here to help in a way that is appropriate for your business. Feel free to ask a question of Fifth Step’s Virtual IT director team who will get you back on the right path.