Glossary of information management: 20 terms you need to know

Managing information effectively is essential to ensure that the company can get the insights it needs to make the best decisions for the business. In an age where huge volumes of data are being generated every day, companies seek to find the best ways to deal with information on a daily basis. In today’s article, we leave you 20 terms on information management you need to know!

Descriptive analysis

This type of Data Analytics answers the question “what is happening now?”. Through the response, companies can analyze data on customer losses, sales for a particular product, and the outcome of launched campaigns. Descriptive analysis allows immediate decisions to be made with a high level of security, since the analysis is based on concrete and current data. The information coming from this type of analysis is usually displayed in graphs and tables, which allows the manager to have an overview of the processes monitored.

Predictive Analysis

Predictive analytics is an advanced form of Data Analytics that aims to answer the question “what will happen?”. It is a type of analysis that makes predictions through probabilities. This analysis is possible thanks to techniques like regression and progression analysis, pattern matching and various types of statistics. This type of Data Analytics is widely used in stock market and investment companies.

Diagnostic analysis

Diagnostic analysis will explain why something happened. This type of analysis will relate all available data and information to find patterns of behavior that may explain the results. It is an important analysis to find problems and above all to avoid repeating them in the future.

Prescriptive analysis

The prescriptive analysis is the analysis of premonition. It answers the question “what could happen if we take this action?”. This type of analysis is very important especially in the sales area. For example, “if we think about giving a 15% discount next month on the company’s lesser-selling product, the likelihood of increased sales is 40%”. The prescriptive analysis raises hypotheses about possible results of actions taken by the company. It is an essential analysis for managers, as it helps them to evaluate the best way to choose a certain strategy to solve a problem.

Backup

The backup allows you to back up data and files. If there is a computer problem and important files are lost, the only alternative is to redo the work that has been done previously. This leads to a large productivity drop. Having an up-to-date backup of the data will allow the company’s revenue to not be affected because even in the event of a computer disaster the employees will have access to the documents they need to work.

BAM

BAM stands for Business Activity Monitoring and is a tool that defines the process and technologies to be able to put information about the company’s KPIs in real time on a dashboard. What BAM does is only show in one place all the information coming from the most varied sources of data of the company, eliminating the need to consult several databases and related to know what is happening in the company at that time.

Data base

Set of related files, tables, relationships, which stores data and makes associations between them. Databases are currently the most important assets of a company.

BI

BI (business intelligence) is a technique that helps managers plan the company’s strategy by collecting and analyzing a large volume of data to understand the company’s performance and then to decide more consciously about the future.

Big data

Big Data is the term that describes the immeasurable volume of data (structured or otherwise) that has a daily business impact. More important than the amount of data, that’s what businesses can.

Data scientist

This will be one of the most sought-after professions in the future. A data scientist is an analytical professional who has the technical capabilities to solve complex problems and has come up to deal with the huge amount of unstructured data that companies have to deal with on a daily basis. This professional creates algorithms to extract insights from the data generated by the diverse sources of information and presents them in a practical and simple format to analyze by the decision makers, who will then be able to define strategies and decide the best way for the company.

Cloud

Cloud Computing is a model that allows full network access to a set of shared computing resources (networks, datacenters, storage, services, applications, among others) that can be quickly made available with minimal effort and without interaction with the supplier.

CRM

CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management, that is, Customer Relationship Management and is used by thousands of companies to manage their relationship with current and potential customers. This software aims to protect the business information of a company. At the same time, a CRM helps identify the best actions and the best time to contact the customer, in order to boost the sale. Likewise, it allows you to evaluate objectives and evaluate the sales team.

Personal data

According to the GDPR, personal data means any information relating to an individual person identified or identifiable through them (identifiable ‘by reference to an identification number or to one or more specific elements of his / her physical, physiological, psychic, economic, cultural or social ‘).

Dashboard

A dashboard visually displays the most important information about the business. In case of using a tool like Multipeers, the information is updated permanently and automatically, so that you have at your disposal the most current information on everything that happens in the company.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the ability machines have to think like humans. It defines your ability to learn, reason and decide autonomously and intelligently. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a recent concept. It first emerged in 1956 by John McCarthy, a university professor who used the term to describe a distant world in which machines would be able to solve all problems that until then were solved exclusively by humans.

KPI

KPI stands for key performance indicator, that is, key performance indicator. In the business world, KPIs are quantifiable measures that serve to understand whether the company’s objectives are being met or whether the strategy needs to be modified to achieve them.

Data masking

Data masking aims at creating a structurally identical but not equal version of data. This technique creates a database with fictitious but realistic information that can be used for testing and training purposes. Data masking solutions offer a variety of sophisticated scrambling techniques to protect sensitive data, irreversibly replacing them with data that is not real, while maintaining the referential integrity of the database.

PDCA

PDCA is the go to plan, do, check and act. It is a management technique linked to the improvement of a company’s processes. Its purpose is to solve problems, pointing out the causes for potential deviations and productive failures. This process makes the organization of the company more efficient in the long run and it is essential that it be applied from the moment of creation of a business, so that the improvement can be continuous.

Security policy

The security policy is a document developed by the company that records the principles of security that the company adopts and that must be followed by the employees. The security policy should be applied to all information systems, both desktop and mobile. For policy to be respected, it is essential that top managers participate in the implementation.

VPN

A VPN network is a virtual private network that transmits encrypted data as it navigates from one point to another in the Web world. Connecting through VPN enables the user to browse websites securely and privately. VPN connections are increasingly used as they allow remote access to local files and is a safe way to browse through public Wi-Fi networks.