Data mining is the process of analysing large sets of raw data to discover patterns and correlations and turning that into actionable insights to help drive decision making. Businesses use data mining to learn more about themselves and their customers so they can develop more effective strategies for business functions, mitigate risks and identify new business opportunities.
Below we have looked at the data mining process, breaking it down into detail;
1. Define the problem
- What are you trying to solve?
- What outcome do you need to predict?
- How does the problem affect business decisions?
2. Prepare the data
- Data consolidation – move data from multiple data sources into one place
- Data cleansing – determine which data is most appropriate for use in analysis
- Data transformation – transform the data into a format suitable for analysis
3. Explore the data
- Calculating mean and standard deviations
- Calculate minimum and maximum values
4. Build data mining models
- Select the relevant data columns to produce a mining structure
- Identify an algorithm to generate predictions
5. Validate data mining models
- Test model performance
- Compare model results
6. Deploy data mining models
- Deploy to production environment
- Use the models to create predictions which can drive business decision making
- Create reports that allows users to interact with the models
- Update the models as more data becomes available
Subsequently, we looked at the benefits of improving the customer journey using data insights;
1. Resourcing and workload planning
- Identify peaks in customer activity and adjust resourcing accordingly
- Identify knowledge gaps and project pinch points
2. Customer services
- Improve quality of customer service
- Address customer issues
3. Provide personalised experiences
- Customer behaviour
- Identify new business opportunities
- Develop tailored marketing strategies
- Adjust business strategies using predictive insights
If you would like a chat about data mining and the benefits you can gain from it, please do get in touch