Data Insights for Business Decisions

DATA INSIGHT FOR
BUSINESS DECISIONS

Contents
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................................3
State what type of data is collected..........................................................................................................3
Describe orthodox research and how this is different from big data........................................................4
Explain how information is captured and stored with key references to types of data and management
information..............................................................................................................................................4
Describe the impact of technological development on the role and use of data in business decision
making process within your chosen sector...............................................................................................5
How information and data is used within the day to operations of organizations within that sector and
what is its strategic importance to the organization within its sector.......................................................6
How data capture and use can be improved in a given sector or organization.........................................6
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................16

INTRODUCTION
Data insights refer to the knowledge that an organization gains from analyzing the
different sets of information about a particular topic or situation. The analysis of the information
provides useful insights that further help the company in making informed decisions and thus,
reduces the risks. Data insight is important because it contributes to the overall performance of
the company and ensures that the different business operations are conducted smoothly (Black,
2019). Organization chosen for this report is Marks and Spencer, which is a British multinational
retailer of clothing and household products. The company was founded in the year 1884 by
Michael Marks and Spencer and Thomas Spencer. The presentation includes the type of data
which is collected and used by the organization. There is also an explanation of how information
is captured as well as stored with key references to the different types of databases. Lastly, the
impact of technological development on the role and use of data in the business.
MAIN BODY
State what type of data is collected
Marks and Spencer is a multinational organization that operates across various
geographic locations. The company collects different types of data in order to stay relevant and
up to date about the latest trends in the market as well as the different strategies of the
competitors. First party data helps the respective company in understanding the needs of the
customers in an effective manner. The company collects both big data as well as first party data.
Big data can be defined as a collection of data that is large in volume and keeps on growing with
time at an exponentially. Big data is highly complex and large in size which cannot be managed
by the traditional tools of data management. The respective company collects big data as it helps
in create new and innovative opportunities of growth as well as information about the buyers,
suppliers, preferences of consumers as well as about the products and services.
Besides big data, the company also collects 1st party data, which it collects directly from
its customers. The data is collected from subscriptions, various platforms of social media
wherein the customers comment on the pictures as well as videos that are uploaded by the
marketers of the company (Griva and et.al., 2018). First party data is also collected from the
visitor’s activity on the website of the company and this has helped the company in gathering

data about the behavior as well as interests of the customers. There are other ways that the
company uses in order to gather first-hand information such as offline surveys, customers
feedback etc. This provides useful insights and helps the company in making informed decisions.
All of the data that is gathered is stored in a Customer Relationship Management database. With
the effective use and implementation of the collected data, Marks and Spencer has been able to
gain a competitive advantage.
Describe orthodox research and how this is different from big data
Orthodox research can be defined as a research wherein the researcher adheres to
accepting the norms (Hair Jr, Page and Brunsveld, 2019). On the other hand, big data can be
defined as a collection that is huge in terms of volume. Such type of data continues to grow with
time as the operations of the company expand in the coming years. In an orthodox research, the
researcher complies to the different norms in order to conduct the research in an effective
manner. Big data is the data that is a massive amount of data that is used by an organization in
order to make informed decisions and gain a competitive advantage in the market. The main
different between an orthodox research and big data is that the amount of data in the research is
much less than big data, which is huge in terms of volume.
Explain how information is captured and stored with key references to types of data and
management information
Information capture is important for an organization and can be defined as the process of
collecting forms, paper documents as well as e-documents and transforming the same into
accurate, digital information and delivering the same into databases and business applications so
that they can be put into action immediately. The different methods for capturing information
include manual keying, OCR or Optical Character Recognition, Intelligent Character Reading,
Barcode or QR Recognition etc. OCR is a technology that is used to capture data and enables the
respective organization to recognize characters that are produced through the machine as a part
of the data capture and extraction process. On the other hand, ICR refers to the computer
translation of characters that are hand written or printed. The process of intelligent character
reading is more difficult as compared to OCR (Hazen and et.al., 2018). There are different types
of data that is captured by the company, as discussed. First party data is usually captured through