The advantage of analyzing both structured and unstructured data
It’s widely reported that 80% of data is unstructured, and a large proportion of that consisting of text.
The advantage of analysing both structured and unstructured text data, is that you will not only unlock insights from the remaining 80% of data, but you will tap into insights that explain both the WHAT and the WHY.
For example, sales numbers (structured data) tell you that sales go up or down, but they don’t tell you why this happens. Mining the sales notes, social media sentiments and survey data allows you to understand why the sales went up or down. Insights, patterns, and concepts are usually buried deep in human-language communication data (like, emails, notes, surveys, social network posts, tweets, etc.) that we call “unstructured data.”
As summarised in the below table, mining both structured data and unstructured text together leverages the strengths of both while offsetting many of the individual weaknesses.
Before starting any project with Ipiphany spend some time thinking what unstructured text data sources you may be able to source. Suggestions include:
- Survey comments
- Social media posts and comments
- Online Reviews
- Emails
- CRM Notes
- Complaints
- Facebook / Linked In profiles
- Voice and Chat transcriptions
- Titles of pages viewed on a website