Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created and approximately 2.14 billion people generate a spend of $1 million per minute purchasing goods and services online. That’s an immense amount of data that tells a story about consumers, operations, opportunities, products, sales and more. Admittedly, some of this data is redundant or irrelevant and some is perishable – if you don’t use it timeously, it’s worthless – but a vast amount of it is untapped wealth. Let’s discuss data value!
So why aren’t we doing more with this valuable commodity? Often, its because of technological limitations like legacy tech or databases that struggle to connect data effectively for richer analysis and deeper insights.
Read on to discover how to turn your raw material into riches!
Raw data
Whilst you do get bad data (incomplete, duplicated, poorly formatted, etc.) it’s not that difficult to turn it into good data (accurate, complete, consistent, etc.). Causes of bad data range from human data entry error and siloed data to inconsistent data capture protocols. Mostly, this can be handled in-house by implementing stricter protocols and a cleaner data strategy. But transforming good quality data into enriched data for more effective AI/ML modelling and deeper insights for decision making takes a little more work.
As you know, good quality data can improve people’s lives, resolve organisational issues, inform effective decision-making, increase revenue, track performance and form the basis of successful individual and company strategies. So if you can do that already, why go to the effort of enriching your data?
The important difference
If data tells a story, then good quality data gives you the storyline, but enriched data fleshes it out with description, detail and context. But why does that matter?
Consider this example:
Imagine on Monday 12 September at 8.15am you order a chai latte, the latest addition to the menu, with your tenth purchase loyalty points. The café receives this good quality data and targets you with a promotional voucher for your next purchase.
But, after buying this chai latte, you rate it one out of five stars on your loyalty app and return at 8.30 to purchase your usual café mocha. When your phone pings with a discount for your next chai latte, how do you feel? Disappointed? Irritated? Unheard? Or perhaps just ambivalent because you only use that coffee shop as it’s on your way to work. Certainly not happy, unless you have a special someone who loves chai lattes.
Now imagine when you get to the till to purchase your café mocha the barrister informs you that it’s on the house. They don’t palm you off with a discount for a hot beverage that you don’t even like, nor do they offer you a reduction on a sandwich or a free pastry because you never order food here. Instead, they use their enriched data to give you what you like and show you that they care. How do you feel now? I know it would make me smile.
And that’s the difference between good quality data, where you can still miss the mark, and valuable data that tells the whole story.
But wait! There’s more.
Even though it’s on promotion, chai latte sales are lower at this shop than elsewhere and your customer base ratings are too. Why? Is this the result of consumer preferences or is there a product quality issue? Combine your valuable consumer data with similarly treated sales and operational datasets to find the answer.
This is how we do data value
Like any raw material, data needs to be processed to add value. Our graph intelligence platform, Locstat LightWeaver®, is data source agnostic so it collates structured and unstructured data from all your channels and third party systems. Our data fabric approach, using a data lakehouse architecture, ensures that all of your data is “under one roof”. This removes the problem of duplication and siloed datasets, whilst simplifying data governance and compliance issues.
During data onboarding, we build curated data streams, e.g. combining or fusing data flows or as a summary stream, then pipeline them into Locstat LightWeaver® for event processing or rules action. These data streams (curated or raw) are auto-graphed (in the graph database) and then we use graph feature engineering to enrich the data further. Graph connects data points (nodes) by their relationships (edges) which can be annotated with preferences, e.g. likes café mocha, or even better, DISLIKES café latte. Other features include similarity with other customers, clusters, location, etc. You can query all of this information or apply graph analytics and algorithms to gain further insights.
This embedded graph database technology fuses and manages disparate datasets to create a highly contextual and curated dataset for advanced analytics and reporting. Importantly, curated and enriched datasets increase data value and longevity, whilst providing greater accessibility and interoperability.
But that’s not all. The enriched, graphed data can be re-pipelined into the system for CEP action on those (newly added) features. So, not only do you have enhanced datasets for analysis, you also have more contextual event processing. And, just to add the cherry on top, that graph feature engineered, high value data set is also available for machine learning / AI modelling. This improves the efficacy of your model, whilst increasing that desirable quality: accuracy.
This curated, enriched and graphed data gives you the competitive edge with in depth insights for more effective data-driven strategies. We have spent years making sense of data to derive higher order insights because we understand the potential value of all the information flooding your company daily. With Locstat LightWeaver® you can make more effective decisions; enhance and personalise customer experience; collect and use feedback to deliver smarter products and services; improve business operations and efficiency; create new revenue streams; perform risk analysis; increase fraud detection; prevent money laundering, reduce waste; and lower costs.
Essentially, our graph intelligence platform manages your data supply chain from start to finish, transforming the raw product into real business riches. Packed with numerous next generation capabilities, Locstat LightWeaver® provides the ultimate in data intelligence for a variety of customer driven industry and point solutions. Affordable, quick to implement, rapidly scalable and delivering quick time to value, we turn your raw data into competitive advantage.
Do you need any more convincing?
Enrich your data and reap the rewards!
