Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

Chapter 18

Unstructured Data Analytics

The Next Frontier*

“There is no way I’m going to let these simian creatures defeat me. While they’re sleeping, I’m processing countless terabytes of useless information.”

—IBM’s Watson supercomputer (Jeopardy champion)

In today’s globally connected arena, with the explosion of the Internet and social media, unstructured data analytics is no longer a choice for any forward-looking company; it is a must. To stay current and continue to successfully operate in this highly competitive marketplace, high-performing companies are turning to unstructured data analytics, because it provides path-breaking insights on customers and market knowledge building. As we have discussed throughout this book, companies need to leverage intelligence from multiple data sources and multiple data types, both structured data and unstructured data. Gartner Research predicts that data will grow 800% during the next five years, and 80% of that data will be unstructured.1 The overwhelming unstructured data is made up from sources such as social media data, chat and e-mail data, Web log data, location stream data, and voice of customer and voice of the market data. To maintain a competitive edge, forward-looking companies have to derive reliable and relevant insights from the ever-increasing stream of data. In order to succeed, companies need to uncover complex patterns, trends, and sentiments that will lead to strategic business actions. As part of this, companies will ...