Your Data Mining Software Needs These Four Features

Does your business have big data problems? Join the club!

Nearly everyone these days is making an effort to find ways to collect, analyze, and organize useful data from simplistic company documents to the furthest reaches of the internet.

The good news is that a growing number of data mining software solutions are being developed to help organizations to find and utilize data that is relevant to business objectives and needs.

The bad news is that not all data mining software programs are created equally, it can be difficult to know which are legitimate and which are lemons. In order to assist you in making the best decision, here’s a look at four features that your data mining software should have.

1. Structured Data Harvesting

The most obvious component required of a data mining software is the ability to harvest structured data. A software’s ability to seek out and organize information pertaining to specific dates, times, numbers, names, key words, etc. is the first step to analyzing one’s business objectives and is a critical component in eDiscovery.

For starters, a large amount of information associated with your internal stall will be created in the form of structured data. Spreadsheets, documents created within office or software suites, e-mails, and even text chats will contain structured data. Although some of the information will be in an unstructured format, the date on which an e-mail was sent or the time at which an instant message was received can all be strategically organized and harvested for analysis. In retail, the information recorded during point of sale transactions is all structured.

All of this information can be utilized to make educated guesses about ways in which a business could improve, maximize sales, and achieve goals. As an example, structured data mining software tools can help to find relationships between a product, and the day of the week that consumers buy it most. In this way, the retailer can ensure that the product will be sold at full price on the days when it is in highest demand.

2. Unstructured Data Harvesting

Unstructured data is a bit tricker to deal with, but is not impossible to harvest when the right data mining software is utilized. Unstructured data in the form of social networking updates, blog posts, Youtube videos, Tweets, etc. can also provide invaluable information to business owners and marketing teams.

In today’s world, consumers are truly living their lives online and they are sharing all of their experiences with their friends and contacts. Even as you read this blog post, your customers could be writing up a Facebook status update encouraging their friends to check out the awesome deals at your sales event, or they could be complaining about how dirty your facility was.

Regardless of what these individuals are saying about your company, you need to know if you hope to continue to attract business and improve.

Despite the fact that unstructured data is vast and ever-growing, a great data mining software will have the capability of sifting through relevant information sources to help you get a picture of what is being said about you.

3. Fusible Data Enrichment

The last thing you want is to become a business who’s left arm doesn’t know what the right arm is doing.

Your data mining software should be fully capable of fusing the information collected from both structured and unstructured data sets and finding relevant connections and relationships between them.

This “big picture” analysis can yield useful and insightful information which can give you a competitive edge and increase your sales revenue - information that would have been left undiscovered without the right data mining software.

4. Scalability

The primary objective of most any business, no matter how big or small, is to grow and thrive. Even if your company is just starting out, you surely have bigger plans for the future. The hope is that ten years from now, your consumer base will have expanded exponentially.

As your clientele grows, you will require the help of more employees, your communications and marketing efforts will increase, and your production will expand. The end result is that the amount of data that is related to your organization will become further spread both across external sources (namely, the internet) and within your own internal business infrastructure. As your operation continues to expand, do you feel confident that your data mining software will be able to keep up?

If you expect to continue harvesting valuable information that will help your company to succeed, you will need a data mining software that is scalable as your demands for information analysis increase.

By taking the time to seek out these four features, you’ll be sure to reap the benefits of your investment in a data mining software tool.

Learn more about Data Mining Software

Interested in discovering more about big data and data mining? Our Resource Center is packed with free eBooks, whitepapers and videos to help you gain an edge in this growing industry.

IKANOW has the data mining resources and tools to keep your organization ahead of the curve. Our product experts are ready to give you a free one-on-one demonstration to show you how our Infinit.e open analytics platform can help you reach your goals with big data.

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