Knowing the right data enrichment techniques is crucial Posted on : Nov 16 - 2021

In 'The Enrichment Game,' the latest book by 'Data Guy' Doug Needham, you'll learn why and how to cull data to gain valuable insights and a business advantage.

From the Uber app that manages your transportation, to the social media application that allows you to stay in touch with your distant friends and family, it's clear that software applications run the world. Each of these applications is continuously generating data.

To win the enrichment game, organizations must take that data and do something useful with it. Organizations must understand how all of this complex data can work together to answer questions, do research, provide insight, forecast the future and recommend new ways of doing business. To do this successfully, data from one application needs to be enriched with data from other applications. Those who can do this successfully can show data in ways that are unexpected and surprising.

The enrichment game has two goals. The first is to demonstrate the value of the data our organizations spend so much money to gather, protect and, in some cases, share. The second is to enrich the data available to a business by showing more context about the meaning of the data. Data strategists, data architects, data scientists, business analysts and business intelligence designers all play the game. Chief data officers oversee it, and the winner or loser of the game is the business itself.

First steps to understanding data enrichment

To understand the enrichment game, we need to know how data specialists differ from software developers in their approach to data.

Software developers create applications to meet the narrow and focused needs of those who need a product developed. A business or enterprise has a portfolio of multiple applications, each meeting the needs of its customers in some unique way. Each application has a constrained set of functions, just like the individual pieces in chess. But unlike in chess, if a new set of functions is needed, a new application can be created, or new components added to the existing application. When a software developer works with data, he or she needs the data to be available to a specific application for a specific purpose. View More