In his book Thriving on Chaos , Tom Peters says, “We are drowning in information
and starved for knowledge.” Indeed, the amount of information available for
business decision making has grown tremendously over the last decade. But until
recently, much of that information just disappeared. It either was not used or
was discarded because collecting, storing, extracting, and interpreting it was too
expensive. Now, decreases in the cost of data collection and storage, development
of faster data processors and user-friendly client–server interfaces, and improvements
in data analysis and interpretation made possible through data mining
enable businesses to convert what had been a “waste by-product” into a new resource
to improve business and marketing decisions. The data may come from
secondary sources or surveys of customers, or be internally generated by enterprise
or CRM software, such as SAP. To convert this information into knowledge
so it can be useful for decision making, the data must be organized, categorized,
analyzed, and shared among company employees.