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Challenges when exploiting and managing data

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The data triangle

To support effective data exploitation, it is useful to consider the ‘data triangle’, shown in Figure 2.2. This illustrates three factors that need to be present to ensure effective data exploitation; similar to a tripod, if any one of the elements is not present, then the overall approach will not stand up. The three factors are as follows:

Analytic and processing tools: You need to ensure that you have both an effective tool set and the individuals with the skills to use it efficiently and effectively.

Subject matter expertise: The world’s best experts in your chosen tool set will only be able to provide minimal benefits unless they are supported by suitable subject matter expertise. This will help to ensure that they are able to understand the context of the particular exploitation challenge, to interpret the meaning of the data, to spot obvious data issues and to provide validation that outputs are sensible.

Data of known quality: It is important not only that you have sufficient data to be able to undertake data exploitation tasks, but also that the quality of these data is known. Clearly, it would be great to have ‘perfect’ data. In real business situations, however, there will be data quality issues that cannot be corrected in a timely or cost-effective manner. The previous discussion on complex decisions showed the importance of knowing and stating the quality of your data and the impact they have on extracting appropriate insight and foresight.

Figure 2.2 The data triangle