NEWS18 August 2016

Structured data more valuable than unstructured, say analysts

Data analytics News North America Trends

US — Internal, business systems and structured data is of more value than unstructured data from IoT, social networks and external sources, according to a survey of business intelligence data analysts, according to research.

Big data crop

The research from Clutch, a B2B research firm, revealed that when collecting and analysing business intelligence (BI) data, analysts most often focus on their organisation’s internal data ( 70%), business systems data ( 59%) and structured data ( 58%).

The popularity of these sources is due to their structured nature, the research claims. The information can more easily be put into a database and searched, and is more accessible than unstructured data such as the internet of things (IoT) and social networks data.

Nearly 85% of BI data analytics users surveyed said structured data was more important than unstructured data.

The survey also found that internally generated data (from within an organisation) is of more value to analysts – around 65% of respondents ranked this source of data as more valuable than that collected outside the company.

Findings were based on a survey with 291 respondents who use BI data analytics tools as part of their role. The full report can be found here.