Almost all businesses nowadays collect large amounts of data about their customers, suppliers, marketplaces, manufacturing procedures, etc, because data has a historical record of producing leads, offering insights, and predicting market trends in ways never seen before.
Data comes from various sources, including mobile devices, social media, sensors, online and offline transaction systems, and other sources.
Decision makers are, therefore, overwhelmed by data while starving for insights within it.
Investors and business professionals are becoming increasingly interested in unlocking the power of data.
And indeed, the era of data is here to stay.
Businesses now have access to vast data because of the development of artificial intelligence (AI), state-of-the-art data collecting and analysis software, and significant advancements in data collection techniques.
However, possessing this data alone won’t help businesses in any meaningful way.
Business leaders must instead rely on intelligent data discovery to find and evaluate the meanings, insights, patterns, trends, and more that help them make critical and rewarding decisions necessary for a successful organization.
Furthermore, according to BI-Survey, 80% of data-driven industries will use data discovery techniques in the coming years.
Companies must strengthen their data management procedures and implement data governance to protect and organize their data more than ever.
This is the point at which data discovery enters the picture.
This article explores the concept of data discovery, its various types, importance, the steps involved in obtaining these insights, data discovery use cases, data discovery tools, and best practices.
What is Data Discovery?
Data discovery is the process of finding relevant patterns in data.
Many data sources are collected, and advanced analytics are used to see and understand particular patterns or trends.
Many companies own a variety of disparate, usually siloed data sources.
Even while these sources could have limited use in and of themselves, their true worth comes from being combined and examined to uncover deeper trends and insights.
These distinct data sources are combined during the data discovery process to give companies a comprehensive understanding of their data.
A better understanding of the data at hand allows for more informed decision-making.
In recent years, data discovery has become increasingly important.
Driven by the surge in remote work, the amount of new data created is expected to surpass 180 zettabytes by 2025, and almost all businesses collect vast amounts of data from suppliers, customers, and other sources.
(source- https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/)
Data is becoming increasingly available to organizations, yet it is insufficient to give them a meaningful, visible impact.
To make significant changes in their business, they want data-driven insights that can be drawn from this data—insights that data discovery offers.
Types of Data Discovery
Since data discovery is a broad and multifaceted concept, it includes types that combine various modeling and analytical techniques.
Although each strategy has advantages and disadvantages, the two most popular methods for finding data are manual and smart.
- Manual Data Discovery
As the name implies, manual data discovery is the manual collection, processing, and analysis of data by a human data management expert.
Without automation, these data specialists would have had to do all the complex steps involved in data discovery by hand before developing AI and ML.
- Smart Data Discovery
However, smart data discovery works in the other way.
Dedicated AI/ML software is necessary for smart data discovery to automate and increase process agility, from data collection and cleaning to the final, complex analysis.
This usually provides faster and more reliable results than manual data discovery.
Importance of Data Discovery
Data discovery is crucial in an era where almost every organization generates, receives, or depends on an exponentially increasing volume of data from multiple sources.
Businesses never had access to such a vast and varied range of data, from internal sales numbers or year-over-year reports to third-party analytics or global trends.
However, the value of data isn’t only in possessing it; it’s in the skillful extraction of hidden themes, patterns, and trends from it.
Individual, segregated data sources don’t reveal any significant meaning unless they’ve gone through the data discovery process, much as eggs, milk, and flour cannot make pancakes until combined and cooked.
After these insights are made open to everyone, they can be analyzed to improve a company’s intelligence, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness.
And these are crucial insights in a competitive business environment.
Efficient intelligence generated by data discovery can be implemented throughout an organization, yielding numerous advantages such as significant financial savings, lesser overhead, increased earnings, exploration of untapped markets, and more.
How is Data Discovered?
These six distinct steps make up the data discovery process:
- Determine your needs.
- Combining data sources
- Data Cleaning
- Data Visualization
- Data Analysis
- Recording the results
Nonetheless, different data discovery methods will require other ways, using various tools, strategies, and objectives.
One thing, though, always stays the same despite these various strategies: data discovery is an iterative process.
By repeating the process, businesses can collect, examine, and distill their data for better, more precise insights over time.
Data Discovery Process
Step 1: Determining the Objectives
Defining and outlining the procedure’s objectives is the first step in the data discovery process.
A clear goal is necessary for any effective data discovery process as it provides direction and something to strive for.
Understanding your end goal can also help you choose the type of data you should process and examine, which will improve your approach.
In this sense, having an open mind is crucial, but having a goal in mind can help you stay on track and save time on irrelevant data sets.
This goal changes based on every organization’s needs, industry, and objectives.
However, other instances might be given, such as finding a new target market for an expanding retail business or cutting down on ingredient waste in a factory that makes and processes food.
Step 2: Combining Data Sources
After determining the objective, the next step is to gather and combine all the data from your various sources.
Most businesses have various data sources, including supply chain demands, product histories, email marketing metrics, and consumer interaction records.
Companies can create a complete picture of their data landscape by combining all these different sources.
The clever combination and integration of several data sources is essential for successful discovery.
Businesses require clear and thorough insights, and more than one data source is needed to deliver them.
Consequently, this phase—also referred to as “data crunching”—is crucial.
Step 3: Data Cleaning
The data preparation and cleaning step of the process comes next.
This step, frequently the most labor-intensive, helps businesses better understand the insights within the data by eliminating irrelevant and superfluous components.
Cleaning frequently entails employing specialized, automated tools and techniques to enhance the data’s quality.
These tools can detect null values, eliminate outliers, and standardize data quality. They can also unify a range of data formats.
Without it, analysts won’t be able to find meaningful business insights because the data would be too complex.
It also accelerates and makes the data’s ultimate analysis and visualization simpler.
Step 4: Data Visualization
The data must then be visually represented once thoroughly cleaned and formatted comprehensibly.
Turning prepared data into a simple and understandable visual representation is known as data visualization.
Effective data visualization techniques include charts, maps, graphs, and diagrams, which help businesses comprehend their data and derive valuable insights.
Step 5: Data Analysis
A thorough and insightful analysis is required now that the data has been visually represented.
This research aims to produce a brief, readable data summary highlighting essential trends, patterns, or insights.
The analysis expands on the visualization’s implications by emphasizing important data, key points, and noteworthy trends that company executives should know.
It is possibly the most significant of these six steps and is frequently referred to as bringing out the “story” hidden inside the data.
Step 6: Repeat
At last, the entire process starts again after the analysis is finished.
Data discovery is iterative, just like most data analysis.
Because so much data is produced almost constantly, companies must approach data discovery in a nearly continual manner to maximize the value of their data.
Even if this iterative process appears arduous at times, the benefits and advantages of data discovery far surpass the time and effort needed to achieve it.
Data Discovery Use Cases
Fraud detection, social media analysis, data accessibility, completeness, compliance, business relationship insights, and lead generation are the primary use cases for data discovery.
Let’s examine some of the more notable use cases for data discovery.
- Lead Generation
You can uncover insights by visually mapping data that might have yet to be noticed.
Data discovery is a popular tool that sales and acquisition teams use to generate leads.
Additionally, they can compile customer data from many sources and produce relevant insights to improve lead generation and scoring.
- Investment signals
Investors need data discovery because it allows them to identify new investment opportunities.
In this situation, searching for and evaluating new businesses to invest in is the main focus of data discovery.
To produce investment signals, investors have two options: they can use advanced data discovery technologies or perform manual data discovery.
An excellent resource for investors searching for new companies is firmographic data.
It makes finding new businesses that would otherwise be out of your reach simple.
You can filter companies based on specific criteria and find new investment options that meet your ideal company requirements using data components like company name, location, headcount, industry, revenue, and more.
Tools for Data Discovery
Because there are multiple approaches to the data discovery process and it requires a variety of tasks, it cannot be completed in a single phase.
Data discoverability can be done using a variety of tools.
Most of these tools are used to discover data, such as merging data from many sources and finding patterns and trends.
Nevertheless, when selecting these tools, there are a few helpful pointers.
First, it’s essential to be flexible. Opt for tools that can connect to different data sources easily.
It would be best to think about usability, meaning anyone should be able to use the tool efficiently.
For example, can non-technical users quickly use the tool’s UI when required? Data discovery’s accessibility to all stakeholders is what gives it its power.
Performance and scalability are also critical. Will the tool manage the increasing volume without sacrificing performance as your data needs grow?
Lastly, look for solutions that include robust security features to protect your sensitive data.
Data Discovery Best Practices
By implementing practical and standard procedures into your data discovery process, your company can fully utilize its data and make better informed and efficient decisions.
If you want to improve your data discovery process, the following three best practices are something to consider.
- Focusing on data quality: This includes making sure the data is accurate, comprehensive, consistent, and relevant. Real insights and confident decision-making are the results of high-quality data.
- Implement data governance: Besides protecting sensitive information, governance techniques, including transparent policies, data ownership, and usage rights, will improve compliance and data usage.
- Automate the process: As discussed above, there are multiple benefits to the automated data discovery process. Still, one of the main ones is that it speeds up and streamlines the business process.
Conclusion
Companies can comprehensively understand their customers by collecting and analyzing behavioral, transactional, and sentiment data from various customer-facing channels through data discovery.
Data discovery is invaluable for assisting decision-makers in identifying early indicators of consumer dissatisfaction.
Business executives can better understand how customers perceive the organization by using data discovery.
All things considered; data discovery is an effective method that makes use of every aspect of a dataset to maximize your data’s potential.
Businesses, data experts, and investors must realize that discovery and classification are essential elements of business intelligence and data security as more and more data is generated in bytes.
FAQs
1. What is data discovery in business?
Data discovery in business refers to the process of uncovering meaningful patterns and insights within large datasets. It involves combining and analyzing diverse data sources to make informed decisions and gain a comprehensive understanding of an organization’s data landscape.
2. What is the importance of data discovery for decision-makers?
Data discovery is crucial for decision-makers as it allows them to extract hidden themes, patterns, and trends from data. In today’s data-driven era, businesses can achieve significant financial savings, increased earnings, and explore untapped markets by leveraging insights gained through data discovery.
3. What are the types of data discovery methods?
There are two main types of data discovery methods: manual and smart. Manual data discovery involves human experts manually collecting and analyzing data, while smart data discovery utilizes AI/ML software to automate the process, providing faster and more reliable results.
4. What are the steps involved in the data discovery process?
The data discovery process consists of six steps:
- Determining your needs
- Combining data sources
- Data cleaning
- Data visualization
- Data analysis
- Recording the results The iterative nature of this process allows businesses to continually refine and enhance their understanding of data over time.
5. What is the role of data cleaning in the data discovery process?
Data cleaning is a crucial step in the data discovery process as it involves preparing and enhancing the quality of data. Automated tools are often used to eliminate irrelevant components, detect null values, and standardize data formats, making the data more accessible for meaningful analysis.
6. What are the primary use cases for data discovery?
Data discovery has various use cases, including fraud detection, social media analysis, data accessibility, completeness, compliance, business relationship insights, and lead generation. It is a valuable tool for uncovering insights and improving decision-making across different industries.
7. What tools can be used for data discovery?
There are multiple tools available for data discovery, and it’s essential to choose flexible, user-friendly options that can connect to different data sources easily. Consider factors like usability, performance, scalability, and robust security features to ensure effective data discovery.
8. What are the best practices for data discovery?
Implementing best practices in data discovery includes focusing on data quality to ensure accuracy and relevance, implementing data governance for protection and compliance, and automating the process to speed up and streamline business operations.
9. How does data discovery benefit lead generation?
Data discovery is a valuable tool for lead generation as it enables sales and acquisition teams to visually map data, uncovering insights that may have been overlooked. By compiling customer data from various sources, businesses can enhance lead generation and scoring processes.
10. What role does data discovery play in investment decisions?
Data discovery is essential for investors seeking new opportunities. It allows them to identify and evaluate new businesses through advanced data discovery technologies or manual processes. Firmographic data, including company name, location, industry, revenue, etc., is a valuable resource for discovering new investment options.
