Talking about Big Data, people often jump straight to sophisticated data analytics and predictive insights that came from this system. However, according to a survey by CrowdFlower, data scientists spend 80% of their time on data preparation, which accounts for 60% of cleaning and organizing data and 19% of collecting data sets. Although 76% of data scientists said that data preparation is the worst part of their job, but without thorough data preparation, accurate business decision-making process cannot be achieved. Data preparation is a process of gathering raw data and getting it ready for an analytics process. This process will include gathering, assessing, creating category, cleansing, refining, validating, formatting, and transforming data into a ready to digest format for the analytics tools. Why does data preparation matter? Here are some benefits of data preparation that you need to know.

Fix discrepancy and ensure data accuracy

Data preparation can help catch errors in the data quickly before the processing begins. Fixing mistakes and discrepancies in the raw data is very critical because once data has been removed from its original source, it is very difficult to understand and correct the errors. Spending time fixing errors during data preparation can help companies improve data accuracy and ensure that the result of the data analysis will be of high quality, processed more quickly and efficiently, and therefore lead to better business decisions.

Create a data-driven culture and establish trust in data

Establishing data preparation as a standard process in your business can help create a data-driven culture across the organization, improve collaboration, and strengthen the relationship between business units and the IT departments. With proper gover0ce, each data preparation can help companies to reduce operational tasks and accelerate time-to-value, and therefore allow organizations to manage their resources more effectively and significantly improve productivity. Not only that, by implementing data preparation, business users can evaluate the accuracy of their data before it is being processed and analyzed, and therefore increase the organizational trust and confidence in data. 

Increase data processing speed and enable faster decision making

Not only improving accuracy and quality data preparation can also help businesses increase data processing speed. It allows faster response, reduces the time needed for iteration to fix errors, and accelerate access to report and analytics. This will, later on, enable faster decision making while at the same time improve user satisfaction. When companies start to make well-informed decisions, this will lead to better customer engagement, increased revenue, profitability, and business performance, therefore allowing companies to achieve their target and lead the market.

Data preparation allows companies to clean their data before analyzing it. This important process will help businesses to have better confidence in their Big Data Indonesia. Data preparation requires collaboration between departments and a clear understanding of the objectives and the problem that need to be solved. Investing in data preparation tools and strictly establish a process and gover0ce for data preparation before doing the actual analysis will help you optimize performance and reach your organizational goals.