The more data is refined and tested, the more accurate the knowledge it produces. In a long gone historical time scholars used to travel across the world to the great library of Alexandria, simply to study. Now vast amounts of data and information are available without travel. This resource is available to business as well as science, yet business managers still make the same fundamental mistakes over and over again.
Belief in the Desire Rather than the Fact
Principal amongst these is the failure to take account of the full facts before making decisions. Knowledge is available for study in far greater quantity in this modern computer age so there is no excuse for lack of research.
The Age of Knowledge Dissemination
The momentum of business computerisation accelerated as development of the Internet allowed for the introduction of end-to-end electronic trading, banking and information dissemination.
The ever increasing use of computers and the corresponding reduction in traditional methods of trading has led inevitably to huge quantities of data being generated and stored electronically. Originally this situation presented business with its own set of issues. Linking computers or data storage devices together was a complex process and usually required a business to employ outsourced expertise and considerable amounts of time. The problems arising from transfer of data from one system to another or with duplicating data for backup purposes is exacerbated by the fact that many applications lock data into storage formats usually inaccessible to other applications.
Data Management and Analysis
In the days of main-frame computer dominance in business IBM developed a data storage and access facility which evolved to become DB2. This was challenged in the marketplace by Oracle and other data management products, however most of these required storage capacity and processing power not available to PC users. Even with more recent increases in personal computer power and the development of high speed networking the price ticket of powerful database management systems deterred the SME sector from venturing too far into the world of data warehousing and analysis. However, along the way a solution came to be born in the form of sequential query language or SQL.
The SQL data standards for storage and retrieval have become the business method of choice and now even DB2 and Oracle offer SQL data options with their flagship products.
High Speed Networks, Data Movement and Retrieval
Advances in recent years have benefited business greatly. Data transfer has been simplified with data transfer rates across modern networks offering the capability of vast amounts of data movement or copy within reasonable time scales. Data retrieval is also improved with many data sources now accessible via SQL query. This has paved the way towards effective data merging, where data from a range of sources can be streamed together for analytical purposes.
Identifying the Useful – Validation of Data
Methods of data generation, data mining, storage and retrieval are wide ranging. The skill required by the modern businessman lies in determination of how to analyse and validate data to product knowledge which delivers an effective competitive edge.
Look out for other articles in the series IT in Business. The next is entitled IT in Business: Control of IT.
