Data Curation Services

In the words of a great author Maria Popova “Curation is a form of pattern recognition – pieces of information or insight which over time amount to an implicit point of view.”

Let’s now dive more into learning about data curation but first let’s understand what data curation is in a real sense?

In today’s world data is available at different platforms public or private in very large volumes but to find useful and required information is like finding a needle in a haystack and that’s where data curation comes in handy.

It is the process of finding meaningful information through that huge pile of data curation. In simpler words it is creating, organizing and maintaining datasets in a way that can be used by the users to find useful information efficiently and effectively.

Now let’s go through the key components of Data curation that will help in enhancing the process.

1. Data cleansing 
Purpose – The main aim in data cleaning is identifying and removing the inconsistencies, errors or any other inaccuracies in the dataset and make the data set more clean and consistent throughout the whole dataset.

Process – While performing cleansing of data first you need to start with removing the duplicate or dummy data in the set and also check for any data that doesn’t match the pattern and remove that data instantly. This needs to be done so that while showing the insights or any graphical picture of your data it will provide the accurate results and will be more efficient in predicting the other similar results related to that dataset.

2. Data Organization 
Purpose – Organizing the data according to different use cases or any other filters like based on geo location or in any other logical based filters that can help the user to get the required information in less time because of the indexing and filtering.

Process – For organizing the data make sure to check the type, source or relevance of the information that the user could search for and can vary according to different needs of users from different locations or fields of service.

3. Data Annotation
Purpose – So annotation is like adding the meaning and description to different data to make it more easy for the user to understand the dataset more easily even if the user is new to development or data analytics he/she will easily understand about the dataset.

Process – This involves setting or arranging the data with appropriate titles or description so that others who will use that particular data set will understand and easily find the required data.

4. MetaData Management
Purpose – The metadata provides essential information about the dataset like the source, ownership, versioning or the structure.

Process – This type of data is mostly generated automatically like timestamps, file formats or data lineage(where the actual data came from and when was edited if so).

But even after knowing this, data curation has many benefits in the real world. Let’s know about some of the benefits of data curation amongst many of them.

Enhanced Data Usability

1. Improved Accessibility – Data curation helps in cleaning and arranging the data in such a way that it can be easily accessed by the users and increases the readability and understandability.
2. Consistency and relevance – Through data curation one arranges the data in a more sorted and filtered way such that the same kind of data is grouped together and we don’t have to go through all the data at once instead find the accurate filter and group according to our requirement.

Improved Decision Making

1. Accurate Insights – Effective curation helps in getting accurate, reliable and comprehensive data for analysis, helping in better insights.
2. Faster decision cycles – Having accurate data with better insights helps in taking business decisions more smoothly and effectively within less time.

Regulatory Compliance

1. Data Governance – Well curated data often aligns with all compliances worldwide so that there must not be any issues with the rules or regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, etc.
2. Reduced risk – With efficient curation of data all data is well recorded and traceable and different organizations can meet the compliance obligations more easily.

Data Longevity

1. Sustainability – Well curated data always serves the purposes in the long run and helps users or the analysts for many years to follow.
2. Data reuse – As the data is valid for longer time durations it can be used again and again and reduces the time in analysis.

After learning all about data curation let’s see some of the real life examples where the organizations are using data curation techniques -:

• Healthcare: NIH(National Institute of Health)
• Finance: JP Morgan Chase
• Academia: Harvard Database
• Retail: Walmart
• Telecommunication: AT&T

Our Services

Data Cleaning and Transformation: Ensuring your data is clean, accurate and in a consistent format.

Metadata Management: Implementing robust metadata management practices to improve data discoverability and usability.

Data Enrichment: Enhancing your data with additional context and attributes to increase its value and utility.

Data Cataloging: Creating comprehensive data catalogs to facilitate easy data access and management.

Data Quality Monitoring: Continuously monitoring and improving data quality to maintain high standards.

Conclusion

In this data heavy world where today the most important wealth is data and that too having factual and correct data. Data curation is no longer a luxury but a necessity for every business which needs to excel in this ever growing and data consuming world. And with proper structure and techniques this can help to shape any business and provide a vast amount of opportunities in the near future with AI and ML on boom.

At last but not the least I would like to end with another interesting quote by another great author “Where data is smoke there business is fire.” By investing in right data curation techniques and methods it can fuel the fire of innovation in who knows how many and provide a new way about how we look at the datasets.

At GreyMatterz we provide Data Curation Services to enhance data usability, ensure compliance, improve decision-making, and promote data longevity across industries. Contact us today to get started!