subject: Data Mining – a Necessary Call to Succeed in Today's Business World [print this page] Today, every business has to survive huge competition in order to succeed and grow. For this it has to collect a lot of information starting from sales report to customer data, market research and analysis, inventory lists, etc. All these data are available in a variety of formats that requires effective management and analysis for the business to grow. A method of organizing large amount of data and summarizing it into useful information is known as data mining.
Data mining allows users to analyze the given information from a variety of angles and categorize it into the relations identified. Data mining if done effectively can significantly reduce costs and increase revenue. Today, data mining is even easier with so many outsourcing firms providing effective data mining services and affordable prices.
The process of data mining includes a number of technical approaches, such as:
Data Integration- At first all the scattered data are collected from different sources and are integrated to have them together at one place.
Data Selection- All the data that we collected and integrated might not be of use to us. In this step we classify and select only the data that is useful for us in the process of data mining
Data Cleaning: The next step is to clean the data and make sure to remove any errors or inconsistent data present. Also, we should be able to find out missing values, if any.
Data Transformation- To make the data ready for mining, it is necessary to transform data into appropriate form, which can be done using methods such as smoothing, aggregation, normalization, etc.
Data Mining: Now, our data is ready to apply different techniques of data mining and discover various interesting patterns. We can use various techniques for pattern evaluation such as visualization, transformation, selecting the best pattern out of various pattern generated, etc.
However, important point to note here is that data mining is not all about finding patterns and relationships. We cannot find relationships where none exist, even after the application of data mining. There are different algorithms and processes available for the process of data mining, which are not very difficult to understand. So, start using data mining for your business today in order to succeed in the new competitive business market.
Data Mining a Necessary Call to Succeed in Today's Business World
