What is data mining?
Data mining is the process of examining large databases to determine patterns in data. This field is a combination of statistics, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Data mining helps companies make informed decisions about future products or service offerings, and improve their business processes and customer engagement.
While analytics is associated with generation and dissemination of insights and foresights at an industrialized scale, data mining for business analytics occurs in the innovation and experimentation stages, where data scientists and analysts find hidden patterns in data and test business hypotheses.
What are the business benefits of data mining?
Whether enterprises choose to use data mining software or contract with data mining companies (experts in how to scale data), data mining yields multiple business benefits including:
- Improving decision-making, planning and forecasting.
- Helping reduce risk, exposure and cost.
- Opening up new revenue streams and improving customer relationships.
In addition, different types of organizations may experience different types of data mining transformation—with discreet data management and techniques—and realize industry-specific business benefits. For example:
- Retail organizations can learn about customer shopping details and habits to enhance store layout, improve customer experiences and increase profits.
- Pharmaceuticals companies can determine the best treatment for cancer patients in their clinical trials, and healthcare providers can receive alerts on patients that are at risk for opioid addiction.
- Financial and banking organizations can determine risk models for mortgages and other loans, as well as detect fraud.
- Sales and marketing teams can improve their content, increase customer engagement and satisfaction, as well as more accurately target their advertising and other campaign-related efforts.
