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7 Reasons Why Data Preparation Should Not Be Overlooked

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Picture of Sunil Hans
Sunil Hans
Data-Preparation_1

With the increasing digitalization of business processes, it is more than necessary for enterprises to empower as many users as possible to extract actionable insights from quality data. A majority of companies view data preparation as an important tool to improve their ability to employ data in a distributed manner for data discovery, data mining, and advanced analytics.

The goal of data preparation is to keep up with the demand for data for analytics to gain insight into changing market conditions and streamline business processes. It supports business analysts as well as data scientists by preparing various types of data for analytical objectives in particular. Data integration tools like ETL tools, data warehouse automation, and data virtualization can help companies prepare data to provide data for analytics in a more competent shape, thus generating immediate benefits for the enterprise.

Data preparation is a cornerstone of modern business operations, playing a pivotal role in ensuring the delivery of promised value to customers, reducing operational costs, and accelerating revenue growth. Businesses today operate in data-rich environments, and to harness the potential of this data, it must be refined and transformed into actionable insights. Properly prepared data enables companies to make informed decisions, optimize processes, and deliver personalized customer experiences, all of which enhance the perceived value of their offerings. Moreover, efficient, automated data preparation minimizes errors and redundancies, resulting in cost savings and improved resource allocation. By streamlining data for analysis and reporting, companies can also accelerate revenue generation by identifying growth opportunities, responding swiftly to market trends, and maximizing the efficiency of their sales and marketing efforts. In essence, data preparation is the foundation upon which businesses build their competitive edge in the data-driven landscape of today.

What Are the Key Benefits of Data Preparation?

7 most important benefits offered by data preparation include:

  • Data preparation tool makes data accessible to users such as customers, partners, suppliers etc. These ecosystem entities can utilize data found in a single, code-free environment to deliver insights that prove elementary in making the best possible business decisions without delay. With their own access and permission credentials, each user has the authority to visualize all the information that is relevant to their work.
  • Data preparation streamlines empowerment along with collaboration and creates a data-driven culture. It also enables symbiotic relationships between the line of business and IT. Data analysts specify their requirements for IT while being able to carry out tasks with the help of self-service integration solutions. The additional burden on the IT gets eliminated and IT teams can take up a governance role instead of an operational role. As a result, IT productivity is enhanced substantially.
  • Data preparation methods, by sanitizing, enriching, and structuring raw data, help organizations support decision-making. As organizations start to make informed decisions of higher quality, their end-consumers become happy and satisfied.
  • Data preparation tools also enable business users to establish trust in their data. This is done by enriching lackluster datasets and integrating information to mitigate deficiencies. These preparation tools empower users to evaluate the accuracy of incoming data prior to investing time and resources for analysis. Consequently, users can save a lot of time, accelerating the time-to-value of organizations.
  • Due to the sudden proliferation of data, manual intervention methods fail to prove their worth because of the lack of accuracy and precision. Not to mention, the effort is multiplied. Automated data preparation methods with data integration use cases can clean data to get ready for analysis with a greater degree of relevance and ease. This improves the overall efficiency, making organizations easy to do business with.
  • With improved accuracy and quality, the processing speed of data increases. Data preparation tools make responses faster, enabling access to reports quickly. Therefore, insights can be extracted immediately with the possibility of interacting with other areas, streamlining integration and innovation.
  • The primary impact of data preparation tools is on elevating the true value of data as well as analysis. These tools not only enable faster-decision making, improved satisfaction, and a superior experience for non-technical users.

In short, data preparation tools allow users to clean data before analyzing it. This forms a solid and reliable foundation for business decisions which, in turn, enables organizations to perform better and faster and seamlessly meet business objectives.