Partner Article

Unstructured Data: A Puzzle, A Mystery, A Problem

It’s no secret that we’re creating more and more information both in our personal and business lives. Over the last decade, businesses have been creating and hoarding an enormous amount of information, especially the likes of images, videos, email messages, word documents and data on social platforms amongst other things. This data makes up the variety of information in the three V’s of Big Data – Velocity, Volume, Variety – and has ended up being spread across the business and stored or archived in numerous data repositories including, document management systems, hard drives and, more recently, in cloud-based storage. However, typically this data is not stored in any uniform way or categorised and is being created outside of relational databases on an ad hoc basis. It is unstructured in its very nature, making it very complex to retrieve and analyse. Rather than adding value, it represents increasing risk and cost for businesses.

But what is all the fuss about when it comes to unstructured information? According to Merrill Lynch, it is estimated that as much as 80% of all potentially useful business information is unstructured. Yet, unstructured data is being ignored by businesses, who throw it into any old repository in the hope that it may be useful another time.

Given this situation, it is no surprise that businesses are looking to tackle this information and expand their analysis beyond the database and data warehouse, as they look at a much larger variety of sources to obtain true value from their data. There are two approaches to the process of getting value from unstructured information. The first is the reactive discovery of relevant information, like finding a needle in a haystack, where businesses are trying to locate specific types of information from a sea of data. This is typically the result of some sort of regulatory investigation enquiry, which requires the business to provide evidence. The second approach involves proactively managing and analysing information. By analysing that information in context, it can produce valuable results and insight. The key to this is being able to connect to all those disparate information repositories, analyse the information and manage it all from a single platform – without having to move all the information into a single repository.

Due to the fact that unstructured data is uncategorised and lacks the metadata that allows for easy identification and organisation, businesses find themselves hoarding this information all over the organisation. This can potentially leave data in a state of chaos. This can end up costing businesses vast sums of money to analyse information on a purely reactive basis. As such, proactively organising, managing and analysing unstructured data is not only valuable for business insights, but can also protect your business from costly litigation or regulatory requests. Therefore, businesses must ensure they have an effective information governance policy in place that encompasses unstructured data.

In this series, we will address how businesses can obtain value in unstructured data as well as how they can protect and govern this information to avoid getting their hands burnt by regulators. So stay tuned as we unravel the complexities surrounding the chaotic landscape that is unstructured information.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Nick Patience .