What is Dark Data?
Come to the dark data, we have information…
Although the name sounds like something that should be leading Imperial forces across the galaxy (yes -finally got a Star Wars reference into the blog!) Dark Data is in fact all the raw information that your company collects and stores but doesn’t use. You probably don’t even realise you have it as it’s usually spread out across sources, not in any sort of order and often not complete. So the dark title is referring to how invisible the data has become. It can be made up of such things as: emails and other messages, call records, old spreadsheets and earlier versions of documents.
However as there is so much of it, (it is estimated dark data forms 80 – 90% of all digital data) because it is going to continue to grow, and because data is being seen as more and more valuable it could be useful to collect and analyse what you have. It may provide useful insights for seeing such things as: What is a typical email query? Are you answering calls quickly enough? Is there a certain property location that keeps cropping up?
One of the big advantages of seeing what data you have is the chance to get rid of what is of no use. If it is not going to offer any value to your company it needs to go. Equally move everything you want to keep to one place, freeing up wasted storage space. Looking forward, your company could automate the process of keeping or destroying data.
Take a look at our previous blog post on the various ways you can visualize your collected data, allowing you to make valuable connections between lots of different information.
Let the dark become light…
