Unstructured Data— The Future of Business Analytics

In today’s digital economy, data is dubbed as the new oil in the 21^st century. The analogy rightfully depicts data’s significance in making informed choices in today’s fast-paced business world. Given that 80 percent of the business data is available in an unstructured format, enterprises need to set their priorities right to fuel their data-driven initiatives (no pun intended).

Unstructured data has no pre-defined schema or layout, which means extra effort is required to structure the unstructured information for analytics and reporting. But this extra effort is worth it as it provides a gateway to meaningful insights trapped in business documents, ranging from invoices and purchase orders to feedback and survey forms. 

Also Read: How to Approach Cloud Analytical Solutions

Let’s find out more! 

A Little Background

Historically, data analysts poured all their attention into structured data. The information available in clean format and structure remained at the forefront to extract valuable insights that drive decision-making. On the other hand, unstructured data was considered bad due to lack of formatting and completely disregarded — because they couldn’t make sense of it.

Organizations didn’t have sophisticated tools to extract data trapped in complex business documents back then. Extracting data manually and transforming it into organized information wasn’t (and still isn’t) a feasible option. It would require extensive human effort and oversight, which would cause a significant drain on resources.

Things are Changing!

Fortunately, the lack of solutions available isn’t the bottleneck anymore. Modern businesses now understand the importance of unstructured data. While most organizations still aren’t leveraging their most valuable resource, an increasing number of companies are taking a broad approach to data analytics by incorporating unstructured sources.

It’s certainly a step in the right direction. Unstructured data is at the core of modern business analytics. Large enterprises — including Amazon, Netflix, Uber, and more — look beyond the conventional data sitting in rows and columns and mine unstructured data to access richer insights through data extraction automation. 

Don’t Miss Out!

Companies that don’t leverage unstructured data analytics miss out on meaningful insights. By only accessing a tenth of the information, they fail to take advantage of the data available in their systems. For them, data extraction automation can be a way forward. Using data scraping tools, they can find hidden value in their unstructured documents.

Accessing the right information leveraging data captured from unstructured data sources can yield numerous business benefits, ranging from improved productivity and cost savings to improved customer relationships and greater innovation. It facilitates data-driven decision-making, resulting in higher profitability and improved business outcomes.

Therefore, organizations looking to improve processes and maximize profits must embrace data extraction automation to capture data from unstructured sources. Modern data scraping tools are cost-efficient, faster, and scalable. Organizations operating in any sector, from finance to health, can take advantage of these solutions to fast-track their business intelligence initiatives. 

Parting Words

Unstructured data is outpacing structured data in terms of growth and importance —it’s high time for businesses to realize its critical role in deriving business value. Leveraging data extraction automation solutions, companies can unearth the information trapped in disparate systems to facilitate data-driven decision-making.