Many businesses have been storing data for years. Data are the raw numbers that record unique events or amounts. By itself, data cannot tell you a whole lot. But, if you have a data base or spreadsheet with customer information, sales data, related business costs, or other records about your operations you should be mining that data and returning it as useful information.
Most desktop applications provide basic but powerful tools to query and retrieve that data and format it into finished reports, tables, and graphs. Some even give you basic graphical user interface (GUI) tools to write some basic queries without using SQL. SQL stands for Structured Query Language which is the standard language for retrieving data.
The basic understanding is that data of one type may be related to a different set of data (note-even the lack of a relationship between particular data may be meaningful). For example, a common relationship is the one between sales volume and time of year. The challenge (and the fun part, I think) is to analyze more complex or multiple relationships. What effect does gender have on cash versus credit sales? What are new customers in a certain age group from a certain neighborhood more likely to buy? Basket analysis and cube computing is where the real gold lies.
You may already be sitting on some of the best market research available. Mining information from your data can help you focus your marketing campaigns and more efficiently allocate resources. You may discover new business opportunities or spot market trends. All you have to do is go get it.
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