Big Data For Small Business For Dummies

Chapter 4

Unpacking the Many Types of Data

In This Chapter

Understanding the difference between structured and unstructured data

Delving into internal and external data

Deciding what’s right for your business

Historically, data used to be a very ordered and neat thing. Even before computers, humans used data to impose order on business actions and processes – think of accounting ledgers or stacks of paper transaction records. Computers, and particularly spreadsheets and databases, gave you a way to store and organise data like this on a large scale in an easily accessible way; instead of ploughing through paper archives, business information was available at the click of a mouse. This absolutely revolutionised business processes (imagine doing your tax return or sending out a customer mailing with only paper records to help you). For a long time this form of structured data reigned supreme; anything that wasn’t easily organised into rows was simply too difficult to work with and was ignored.

Now, though, advances in storage and analytics means that the masses of messy, unstructured ...