Have you unlocked the value of your data? We may be living longer, but our businesses are dying younger. In 1964 the average lifespan of a listed American company was 33 years; that number is predicted to fall to just 12 years by 2027, according to a recent study by Innosight. Much of the corporate carnage is a result of rapidly changing consumer needs, and the speed at which new competitors will capitalise on any opportunity you give them.
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THAT THE world is changing faster than ever before is obvious. How to understand what changes are happening and what you should do about them is less clear. Business leaders everywhere are increasingly looking to the data their companies generate for answers; hidden in those ones and zeros are patterns that can help their businesses survive, and thrive.
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Is that sand you’re building on? The proliferation of data, and the value concealed within it, has spawned the Data Science industry. This relatively new breed of worker takes your data and extracts insights you can use to make better decisions. Like any scientist though, the viability of their conclusions depends on the quality of the inputs they use, in this case, data. It would be splendid if data presented itself in an orderly fashion. But it doesn’t. The number of different systems that data is housed in, the numerous formats in which it is captured, and its sheer volume growth make it wild and wandering in nature. Before it can be analysed, data must be organised. Getting data ready for analysis is not a new problem, and solutions already exist. Most are rules-based
programming fixes. But as data complexity ratchets upwards, so the number of rules will need to increase, as well as the time and money spent on developing them. A day will come where data becomes too beastly for humans to control on their own. Thankfully, there is a better way — and it involves using powerful machines. Data that helps you Imagine you had a consolidated view of your customers and what they’d bought from you; would you be able to sell them more? Imagine you could see exactly what you’ve been buying from which suppliers and at what cost; could you save money with that information? What if you knew your business better than competitors knew their own; do you think it would help you survive, thrive? No matter the scale, diversity and complexity of your data, getting a unified view of your customers, suppliers, stock, people, and subsidiaries is now possible with the help of machine learning. The future is automated Instead of relying on intensive human driven instruction, DataSeed employs a unique machine learning process to intelligently unify enterprise data at scale into one easily accessible master record, identifying, for example, that Lerato Ngidi in one system is the same as L. Ngidi in another, even if there is no unique identifier. Because the DataSeed algorithms ‘learn’, the engine classifies your data more accurately as time passes, reducing the need for human interaction in your data unification efforts. This will give you more time to make decisions critical to the sustainability and prosperity of your business using clean, reliable data. ai Contact Data Seed for a demo and to explore how we can help you unlock the value hidden in your data: Murray Kuiper murray@dataseed.ai +27 72 212 4000 www.dataseed.ai
