Insight 1 from Research Focus - source expertise at the centre of success for data analytics
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

In the first of the insights from Jinfo's Research Focus, "Data analytics - ready your information service", director of research, Robin Neidorf, explains why information professionals' source expertise is central to the success of analytics projects.

Item

Source expertise is the most valuable and relevant thing you bring to analytics projects. The same insights and skills you've used to develop and manage a collection of information sources can now support your organisation in avoiding risk, expensive problems and delays in its analytics projects.

Source expertise in the context of analytics means understanding and advising on:

• Licensed third-party content and datasets already in your portfolio

• New types of third-party data you might otherwise not have examined for access - cost and non-cost

• Internal datasets you may or may not have previously worked with.

Analytics strategies and projects need to incorporate knowledge about data sources:

• How are they structured?

• How do we manage them for availability when and where they are needed?

• What commercial terms govern our use and reuse?

• What alternatives are there?

... and no one else in the organisation can answer these questions with the expertise you have.

You may need to cultivate other skills and knowledge with regard to data analytics, and these will differ according to the structure and focus of your organisation. But investing in and promoting your source expertise for the success of analytics strategies is universally valuable.  

Support from Jinfo: leverage our research and experience  

The content in the recent Research Focus, "Data analytics - ready your information service", provides research-based analysis, tips and examples of how to adapt, apply and promote your source expertise in the service of analytics projects and strategy.  

Jinfo Consulting can support you through a bespoke analysis on adapting this expertise to the emerging needs in your business.  

These items from the Research Focus provide specific guidance: 

• Market landscape - data analytics & licensing
• Data analytics & licensing - the role of financial information providers
• Data analytics & licensing - the role of content aggregators
• Data analytics & licensing - the role of business information aggregators
• Data analytics & licensing - the role of company data providers
• What are information vendors doing to support data analytics?
• Standards and ethics in the use of big data
• Jinfo model - researching and planning for data analytics risks
• Overcoming common data analytics risks
• Data analytics - challenges of combining internal data with open data

• Q&A with Findout & ReportLinker - using technology to find answers
• Generating textual narratives from structured data - key vendors
• Natural Language Generation tools - focus on Automated Insights
• Librarians and data scientists - rivals, replacements, or reciprocal relationship?
• Key concepts in data analytics
• Exploring citizen-derived geographic data
• Webinar recording (available to all Jinfo Subscribers): Create your plan to prepare for data analytics
• Webinar recording (available to all Jinfo Subscribers): Identify - and overcome - the most common data analytics risks

The main lessons learned from this three-month Research Focus, plus a thematic index to all content published, are listed in the Insights and actions report from the Research Focus, "Data analytics - ready your information service". Visit the Research Focus page to get your copy.

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