Better Data instead of Big Data

Data is the new oil, many say, and the more you have of it, the better. I would disagree with that. You don't need much "oil" at all. What is much more important is to tidy up the engine room - in other words, to have your processes and data under control - so that everything runs like clockwork.

Whether we post something on Facebook, order shoes in an online shop, or ask Alexa for the weather forecast: Every time, we send a lot of information about ourselves to the operators of these websites and many other companies associated with them. And we know that. After all, we have given our consent with a check mark below the terms and conditions; that we have not read through. If there is a data abuse like on Facebook, we are briefly outraged - and often change nothing.

The data collection hype also seems to have exploded in the industry. Data about customers, suppliers, competitors, products and production processes should help to tailor offers to customers. But collecting data is also an increasingly fine line. On the one hand, you want to know as much as possible about your customers so that you can serve them better and more effectively. On the other hand, if you collect too much, you can lose the trust of your customers or create a data pile where the needle in the haystack can no longer be found. In the digital world, however, it is all about significant correlations, i.e. meaningful relationships between data points.

At LAPP, we are also dealing with numerous digitalization projects across different areas in the company. Each of these projects requires a large amount of data acquisition, revision and processing. We place great emphasis on the accuracy and quality as well as the collection purposes of our data. The questions we ask ourselves in this regard and the challenges we face are discussed in my new article “Better Data instead of Big Data.”