What is Data Intelligence?

The term Data Intelligence refers to all the methods and processes that contribute to the collection and analysis of data to identify key trends that can be used to understand a market or ecosystem. In other words, Data Intelligence consists of refining a large volume of raw data to turn it into exploitable and valuable information.

In this article, you will discover all you need to know about Data Intelligence, from its definition to the advantages it can bring to your company.

Understanding Data Intelligence

Companies undergoing a digital transformation collect and generate large volumes of data. This data from different sources (sometimes third-party data sources) is important to collect and essential to classify, understand, analyze, and thus enhance. This is the very definition of Data Intelligence. This discipline, which is part of Data Science, aims to identify, via raw data, value-added information likely to facilitate decision-making in an organization.

The raw data collected must be considered a precious resource that must be transformed and refined to reveal all its subtlety. Like a diamond in the rough that needs to be cut, Data Intelligence reveals the information to be extracted from the data. Data Intelligence can for instance be used to identify growth or development opportunities for a company, predict the impact of economic changes on an ecosystem, or get ahead of competitors regarding new market trends.

Considered a strategic asset to gain operational efficiency, Data Intelligence cannot (and should not!) be confused with Business Intelligence.

What are the Differences Between Data Intelligence and Business Intelligence?

Regarding Data, disciplines sometimes tend to overlap and tangle in their names and vocations. For example, we often mistake Data Intelligence with Business Intelligence, which has very different goals. Indeed, Data Intelligence aims to create the conditions for structuring data assets with a view to subsequent exploitation. Business Intelligence, on the other hand, is a process that adds value to data once it has been refined by Data Intelligence.

To summarize, Data Intelligence contributes to organizing the available information within the company, and Business Intelligence organizes the company’s activity according to the available information. Therefore, Data Intelligence is a discipline that is firmly oriented towards the elaboration of future strategies (to identify investment opportunities for example), whereas Business Intelligence is based on the understanding of operational processes.

In any case, Data Intelligence and Business Intelligence remain intrinsically linked because they both contribute to making your company’s decision-making processes more fluid.

The Company Objectives for Data Intelligence

Are you considering embarking on a Data Intelligence project? To do so, you need to set a clear roadmap and define clear company objectives. Data Intelligence allows you to analyze your organization’s performance and implement corrective measures where improvements can be made.

Because Data Intelligence relies on the analysis of a wide range of data, it allows for advanced correlations to create extremely fine-grained, in-depth analyses. For instance, if your company has a strong online presence, Data Intelligence will also allow you to understand and anticipate your customers’ behavior by exploiting navigation cookies.

Customer journey optimizations, conversion rate improvement…Data Intelligence allows you to save precious time. A reality that translates into a major competitive advantage.

What are the Benefits of Data Intelligence?

It’s in your best interest to leverage Data Intelligence to better leverage your data assets. Indeed, the first benefit of Data Intelligence is the acceleration of decision-making processes. Forget intuition and risky bets: decisions are based on real-time observations made and quality data.

Data Intelligence also means reducing your risk exposure so you can make decisions based on the knowledge you gain from your data. Less risk of error in strategic decisions also translates into better cost control. Data Intelligence helps identify duplicate data, and unnecessary steps in the analysis or decision-making processes that are detrimental to your company’s productivity.

Data Intelligence allows you to be both more effective and more efficient. Finally, it is a promise to take a step back from your business to identify tomorrow’s trends before your competitors do.

About Actian Corporation

Actian makes data easy. Our data platform simplifies how people connect, manage, and analyze data across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. With decades of experience in data management and analytics, Actian delivers high-performance solutions that empower businesses to make data-driven decisions. Actian is recognized by leading analysts and has received industry awards for performance and innovation. Our teams share proven use cases at conferences (e.g., Strata Data) and contribute to open-source projects. On the Actian blog, we cover topics ranging from real-time data ingestion, data analytics, data governance, data management, data quality, data intelligence to AI-driven analytics.