What is data? Importance and application in business

The concept of Data has become extremely familiar in recent years, becoming the key to an enterprise's business strategy. So what is Data ? How to analyze and use Data effectively? Let's learn all about Data with 1C Vietnam in the article below!

1. What is the concept of Data?

Data is a collection of information including words, numbers, images or other information formats. Data is often collected and processed to create useful information for decision-making purposes based on visual graphs, tables, etc.

Data is divided into 2 basic forms:

• Raw Data: Raw data is original information that has not been processed, filtered or separated into valuable data.
• Processed Data: Is data that has been calculated to create valuable information through tables, graphs, visual images,...

Data appears in almost every stage of the business process. Therefore, each department has a Data warehouse with its own characteristics:

• Marketing Department: Processes data about customers, markets and sales.
• Finance and accounting department: Use data related to revenue, expenditure, and profits to make financial reports.
• Product research and development department: Use data to research the market, analyze trends and develop new products.
• Human resources department: Handles data related to salaries, employees, and timekeeping to manage human resources.

2. Classify Data according to data structure

Besides understanding what Data is , administrators need to understand how to classify data for proper use and statistics. Data classification can be based on data structure. Specifically:

2.1 Structured data

Structured data is information with clear rules and formats that administrators can access, search and analyze easily. This type of data is typically stored in a database management system and retrieved using a structured query language.

2.2 Unstructured data

Unstructured data is information that is not organized in a traditional model and does not have a clear structure. This makes retrieval and analysis more difficult.

Unstructured data is often formatted as PDF, Email, Media and even text document files. To exploit valuable information from this type of data, administrators need to use specialized software such as R, Python,...

2.3 Semi-structured data

Semi-structured data is an intermediate form of data, not fully structured. This type of data may contain structural elements but does not follow a specific model. Common semi-structured data are CSV documents, JSON, XML, and log files.

3. The importance of Data for businesses in the 4.0 digital age

Data plays an important role for businesses in the 4.0 era. With today's volatile market and the development of online shopping, Data is the key to increasing the strength of every business. Specifically:

• Detect and predict trends: From analyzing market data, businesses can discover new trends and business models. From there, you can take advantage of opportunities and devise strategies to increase the organization's competitiveness.
• Smart decision support: Having a solid data foundation and the ability to analyze and use effectively, administrators can have an overview of the situation of the business and the market. From there, more accurate decisions can be made.

• Improve customer experience: Data on customer behavior will help businesses better understand shopping habits, preferences, tastes, and needs. From there, we can strive to increase the best customer experience during the shopping process.
• Developing new services: Based on data on macro and micro markets, businesses can make predictions about trends to develop new product lines and services, responding to rapid customer changes. row.
• Risk management: One of the important roles of Data is to help businesses proactively analyze problems. From there, fully prepare resources and plans to be ready to face real risks.

4. Data application areas that support businesses effectively

Data seems to appear in most business activities. However, depending on the business field, each organization uses Data for its own purposes. Here are some examples:

• E-commerce businesses: Use data to research customer behavior, analyze competitors' websites, evaluate the effectiveness of communication channels, analyze and process sales data and other information. related to business activities.
• Government agencies: Use information such as crime counts, economic and social development indicators, population statistics and environmental reports to evaluate children's behavioral trends people before external influences.
• Healthcare system: Collect information such as medical records, hospital information systems, reports from laboratories,... to evaluate the patient's general health status during the period of time. short time.
• Educational institutions: Data on enrollment numbers, score quality,... thereby building an effective measure to evaluate the quality of education or the quality of facilities.

5. Challenges when collecting Data in businesses

In the current era of digital technology explosion, data overload has become a huge challenge for many businesses. Having too much Data leads to a situation that cannot be processed, making it difficult to analyze and make decisions. Besides, businesses may also encounter some of the following challenges:

• Difficulty in managing large amounts of data: Facing rapid market changes, businesses are faced with collecting and storing data every day. Without the right process, it is easy for errors to occur, causing data loss or collecting unnecessary data that costs money.
• Accuracy and reliability of Data: With today's huge data treasure, choosing highly accurate data can be difficult for many businesses. Besides, incorrect data entry at the input stage can also lead to erroneous results later.
• Privacy security: Data may contain sensitive information of an organization or individual, so using it properly and ensuring the privacy of data subjects needs to be of concern to businesses. Unauthorized access and data trading becomes a painful problem and can seriously affect the development of businesses.
• Insufficient resources and human resources: Data processing on a comprehensive scale requires people with expertise and investment in equipment and machinery. Therefore, most businesses that do not have enough potential cannot produce accurate results from the collected data.

6. Store, analyze and manage Data quickly with 1C:Document Management

To fully promote the role of Data as well as minimize mistakes during the application process, businesses should include specialized support software in the Data management process. 1C Vietnam's Digital Office Solution: Document Management is researched and developed on a modern technology platform to support businesses on their comprehensive digital journey. 1C:Document Management possesses outstanding features such as:

• Large centralized data storage: 1C:Document Management synthesizes data from many enterprise collection systems and stores it in a single space. This helps limit data loss and data leaks as well as save resources compared to traditional storage methods.
• Smart and fast lookup: 1C:Document Management software is integrated with advanced metaData search feature, helping managers easily retrieve detailed text information down to each letter, number, and detail. Save time and increase work efficiency.
• Integration with mobile: Managers can easily access Data anytime, anywhere, helping to process information seamlessly and without interruption.
• Decentralized system for absolute security: Office solution No. 1C:Document Management ensures specific authorization for each individual to access and process specific documents, helping to absolutely secure business data. .
• Automate the data management process: Using modern technology, 1C:Document Management has the ability to automate the data management process, helping to eliminate manual operations and minimize errors. in operation.

Hopefully through the above article, your business has grasped what Data is , the importance of this concept as well as notes when using data in practice. To help the data management process be more accurate and effective, businesses can refer to 1C Vietnam's Digital Office Solution: Document Management with many outstanding features. If you have any questions about Data in general as well as digital management software in particular, please contact us for support.