Business Insight

By PAMELA J. SCHMIDT | Professor | Washburn University School of Business

With all the hype about data analytics and artificial intelligence, it seems like cost and complexity leave small and medium businesses out of the high-tech revolution.

This is not necessarily the case. Using data for business insights is not strictly relegated to using high-end software or paying for expensive consulting. A company’s existing software of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet application, and the newer related application of Microsoft Power BI, both enable small-medium businesses to perform analysis of their business data.

FREE PUBLIC DATA SOURCES EVERY BUSINESS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT:

LEVERAGING MICROSOFT Power BI FOR BUSINESS INSIGHTS

With a Microsoft 365 online application license, companies can use the leading data visualization application of Microsoft’s Power BI (“BI” stands for Business Intelligence). Power BI is a data visualization application from Microsoft that evolved in the last 10 years from a set of new features initially added to the Excel spreadsheet application. Internal business records can be “data enriched’ for analysis by augmenting with free public data sets, particularly governmental repositories with United States census data, economic data, corporate records, weather data and even non-published governmental data can be requested using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

FREE PUBLIC DATA SOURCES TO ENHANCE BUSINESS INSIGHTS

A wealth of free public data sets that can be data mined is available. Using available public data is an economical way to gain practical and useful insights for business decision-making. The “Free Open Data Websites Useful to Businesses” list identifies leading business-related datasets, which can enhance the internal data of a company to better inform management’s decisions.

Many levels of governmental organizations, including states, already provide a great deal of information on the public internet. Try online searches to find what other data can be downloaded or requested. One can use web scraping techniques to obtain visible information of websites in a bulk download versus manually, page by page.

USING FOIA TO REQUEST GOVERNMENT DATA

When data is not already online, there is a means to request public data from governmental organizations using FOIA. FOIA supports a private citizen’s ability to request information from governmental sources and agencies. A central website is www.foia.gov, where one can learn about the FOIA process, targeting a request and other FOIA guidance. Note that this should be a secondary approach, as a FOIA request may result in payment fees (to cover any added costs to assemble and provide the requested data) or extended, unpredictable timeframes to fulfill.

DATA ANALYTICS TOOLS AND RESOURCES

What is the process for using data to inform business decisions? A long-used, cross-industry standard for the activity of data analysis, also known as “data mining,” can be found in the 2000 CRISP-DM process article by Colin Shearer, published in the Journal of Data Warehousing. See table below.

It is notable that college majors in data analytics are now being offered at Washburn University and many other universities across the country. The Washburn School of Business has both a data analytics major and offers data analysis as a minor area of study to pair with other major areas of study.

The use of data analytics provides insights into many processes and activities – proving its value across a wide range of business and non-business domains. Using the affordable yet powerful Power BI application, with metered cloud computing service charges, now puts data analytics computing within the reach of even small to medium-sized businesses.

Reference: “The CRISP-DM Model: The New Blueprint for Data Mining,” Colin Shearer, JOURNAL of Data Warehousing, Volume 5, No. 4, p. 13-22, 2000.

FREE PUBLIC DATA WEBSITES USEFUL TO BUSINESSES:

U.S. GOVERNMENT’S OPEN DATA
catalog.data.gov

Over 300,000 datasets available. The site has searchable topics and lists datasets by popularity, dates and relevance. The site contains over 1,500 datasets related to Kansas alone. Data is organized into categories including local governments, clients, older adults, energy, health data, crime data and various areas of interest.

U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
census.gov

Demographic, economic and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Here you can explore U.S. Census data with visualizations or acquire subsets of data on topics of interest. Data can be sought by regions down to ZIP code, selective timeframes and partial contents of the U.S. census run each decade.

KAGGLE
kaggle.com

One of the many data and technology-oriented areas of this website is dedicated to sharing high-quality public datasets. The home page boasts that Kaggle hosts “408K high-quality public datasets. Everything from avocado prices to video game sales.” It is easy to find sports, agriculture and cryptocurrency along with thousands of other specialized datasets.

SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION’S OFFICE OF ADVOCACY DATA RESOURCES
advocacy.sba.gov/small-business-data-resources

This site shares small business economic data and statistics that are important to policymakers and business leaders.

OPENCORPORATES
opencorporates.com

This website shares data on corporations under the Open Database License and seeks to make company data accessible to everyone. It provides standardized and auditable legal-entity data from over 140 jurisdictions worldwide, sourced from official primary sources. The site has broad coverage of North America and a search for corporate data in the state of Kansas yields over 800,000 registered companies.

TABLEAU PUBLIC DATASETS
tableau.com/learn/articles/free-public-data-sets

Before Microsoft PowerBI took the leadership position in data visualization, Tableau innovated and led in data visualization methods and tools. The company hosts this website for sharing public data and further, it offers best practices in “how” to best visualize various datasets for interpretation and analysis. Tableau has long been a leader in best practices for visual analytics in the form of interactive dashboards and visualizations, which are essential tools to seeking insights from large datasets.

CLIMATE DATA ONLINE
ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web

Weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA). Other historic weather sources include the Weather Channel. Useful to understand historical weather impacts for where are you operate your business locations, which may inform future actions related to weather variations.

FOIA.gov
foia.gov

This is a central site to inform citizens on how to initiate a request for unreleased or uncirculated information controlled by the U.S. government. This right is provided by FOIA