DATA MINING - A UNIVERSAL TOOL
by Zak Pines

In the past decade, data mining has transformed from a tool that only certain companies employ to an integral aspect of any company's business solution -- one which is required to keep ahead of competitors and maximize a company's production and efficiency.

Likewise, the market for data mining products has grown and will continue to grow rapidly. The International Data Corporation estimates that the data mining market was $750 million in 1999 and will be $2 billion by 2002. With every viable company hosting their own Website, while also collecting data on all other key aspects of their business, the amount of data being collected is continually increasing, and by a significant amount -- further creating the need for data mining tools to extract key information from the data.

Even so, most corporations have only just begun to use data mining tools to their full potential. As the Internet era merges with the wireless age, look for the impact of data mining to increase exponentially -- as mining results can be examined in real time.

As cellular phones and high-speed wireless Internet become the norm, programs will be able to collect, process, warehouse and query data quickly and portably. This makes the potential for real-time data mining more and more, well, real.

Consider the possibilities:

1. Investors can discover stock market trends as they happen, and act on them immediately.
2. Sports broadcasters can learn about patterns in a game as it develops, and report them to their audience while the findings still directly relate to the current action.
3. Contact center managers can learn about trends in agent performance, and give agents meaningful advice on improving their performance, throughout the day and while the calls in question are still fresh in the agents' minds.
4. Call center agents can match trends in cross-selling and up-selling to customer profiles to best take advantage of such opportunities as they handle calls from customers.

This list can be expanded to have applications in any data-related field.

Simply stated, the capability for real-time data mining increases data mining's potential impact. Patterns discovered in real time will have more immediate relevance, and any changes based on these patterns can be implemented in a more timely fashion.

In addition, after adjustments are made, data mining will continue to report patterns, to allow for further tinkering and adjustments on the fly. Real-time data mining is an interactive and reactive solution -- interactive in that a user can find patterns and make adjustments based on them while they are still relevant, and reactive because the user can then understand the impact of his changes and decide whether there is a need for any further changes.

Zak Pines is an Analyst and Special Operations associate for Virtual Gold, Inc, an industry leader in intuitive data mining software. Pines is involved in developing end-to-end data mining solutions in various industries. Prior to joining Virtual Gold in 1998, he worked at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (Hawthorne, NY), from 1995 to 1997. While at IBM, Pines helped develop Advanced Scout, a data mining program used extensively by coaches of the National Basketball Association to devise new strategies based on the automatic identification of hidden patterns in game data and video. Pines is a graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in economics.

For more information, see www.virtualgold.com.