Managing—and mastering--data can be make or break for enterprises as they evolve and scale their operations. If organizations could only tame the volume, velocity and variability of data, they could use data to predict sales, stop customer churn, detect fraud, manage equipment, build products more quickly and find new sources of revenue.
The vast majority of enterprises are onboard. More than 90 percent of senior operations executives believe data-driven decisions will help them achieve their business goals, according to a survey conducted by Accenture and HfS Research. There’s also proof businesses are following through. According to Forrester Research, data-driven organizations are growing at an average of more than 30 percent annually.
Putting Data to Work for You
Although many organizations understand the importance of gaining control of data, it’s not without challenges. Becoming a data-driven business means prioritizing a technical strategy and a business strategy. It’s about having both. Getting answers about known data is no longer enough. Organizations also need to wrangle their vast stores of unstructured data.
Anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of data is unstructured and inaccessible for nearly 80 percent of organizations, as Accenture discovered in its survey. Further, only 13 percent of companies have fully automated the interpretation of unstructured content, according to a Forbes Insight survey.
In other words, you’re not alone if your organization is struggling to become data-centric. Maybe your Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool can’t pick up all of the handwritten messages your employees exchange, or your business has a high volume of non-standard forms, such as PDFs and images. External data from suppliers and other third parties, social media and industry clouds complicate things even further.
Solving the Data Dilemma with Intelligent Operations
Data is the backbone of Intelligent Operations— an approach that uses complementary technologies to solve the data dilemma, harnessing data and infusing insights and intelligence into business processes. When structured and unstructured data across internal and external ecosystems are properly connected and analyzed, organizations gain the breakthrough insights they need to improve their performance.
Intelligent Operations drives exceptional value here. Using the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a mature intelligent automation platform mines unstructured data and delivers predictive and prescriptive experiences. Predictive analytics provides insights into the changes necessary to meet the future needs of your customers and business. Prescriptive analytics delivers suggested actions to improve immediate decision-making and expedite business processes.
AI technologies, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis, are what make these data-driven decisions possible. A closer look at how some of these technologies work explains how Intelligent Operations can help your business become more agile, flexible and responsive.
Entity extraction automatically identifies entities referred to in text using NLP and analysis of contextual data. If a user types in the word “bat,” the AI knows whether they’re talking about the flying mammal or America’s favorite pastime.
Sentiment analysis works with NLP algorithms to uncover your customers’ opinions. You can discover how they feel about your products and services, the level of customer support you offer or the effectiveness of an ad campaign. Sentiment analysis requires an ongoing effort. It should be constantly monitored so you can determine how the changes you make are received in the market, then respond appropriately.
Data extraction uses NLP and machine learning to recognize which information is valid, extract it and compile it into a data set or for use in an application. As the process continues, the technology becomes smarter and more accurate, making business processes more efficient.
Cognitive Capture goes beyond basic OCR, ingesting and understanding any document from any channel, in any format. Forms, contracts and letters from mobile, email, web and other channels are analyzed for entity extraction and sentiment. This type of unstructured data is a treasure trove for those who want to get at the heart of issues to improve the customer experience. Cognitive capture extracts sentiment from social streams and chatbots, allowing businesses to identify and respond more effectively to both angry flares and favorable reactions.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses robot workers to automate manual, data-driven activities. You gain access to information that may previously have been inaccessible or too time-consuming to process, while your employees spend more time using that data to serve customers and build relationships. The ability to integrate data from web sites, portals and enterprise applications increases productivity and provides immediate insight for decision-making.
Advanced Analytics provide end-to-end visibility of your systems and processes. With all your data integrated into a single platform, you gain a holistic view based on the latest information from across the business. The ability to analyze data within the context of business processes gives you a deeper understanding of how your customers and clients interact with your organization at every step. Not only will you make real-time decisions, but those decisions will drive high-impact results. Over time, you can measure and improve your effectiveness with high-speed data discovery and data visualization.