Making Sense of Data: A Practical Guide to Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Mining

8.2 DELIVERABLES

There are many options for delivering data analysis or data mining solutions. Some of the more popular include:

• Report: A report describing the business intelligence derived from the project is a common deliverable. The report should be directed to the persons responsible for making decision. It should focus on significant and actionable items, that is, it should be possible to translate any conclusions into a decision that can be used and that makes a difference. It is increasingly common for the report to be delivered through the corporate intranet to enable additional interested parties to benefit from the report.
• Integration into existing systems: The integration of the results into existing operational systems or databases is often one of the most cost effective approaches to delivering a solution. For example, when a sales team requires the results of a predictive model, that ranks potential customers on the basis of the likeliness that they will buy a particular product, the model may be integrated with the CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) that they currently use on a daily basis. This minimizes the need for training and makes the deployment of the results easier. Prediction models or data mining results can also be integrated into system accessible to a customers such as e-commerce web sites. In this situation, customers may be presented with additional products or services that they may be interested in, identified using an embedded prediction ...