Benefitting from AI? Without knowing your data, you will miss the boat immediately.

If you want to be successful with AI, you must focus on your data first. SynerScope inventories (lists/catalogues) and shows the way in what has grown into a confusing data mountain in many companies and organizations.

Any insight into all the data on your laptop? The question is difficult, the answer should be an eye-opener. “We still remember what we stored today or last week,” says Jan-Kees Buenen, CEO at SynerScope. ‘We know its content and importance. But if you go further back in time, it all becomes diffuse. What data is there? Where do you find it? What is important and what can you throw away?’

Buenen just wants to say: if you are already struggling with these types of issues at a micro level, you may rightly fear that things will be no different within your organization or company. ‘The IT people ensure that it is managed technically, not content related. Low storage costs, without active sorting and throwing away, makes the confusing mountain of data grow faster and faster.’ No one knows the total picture and the question is whether the individual details are well known. Everywhere you find so-called ‘dark data’, data from which an organization or company no longer even knows it exists.

It is a stubborn problem, Buenen argues: ‘Look at the Dutch benefits affair. Why do you think it takes so long to process this? Because we must dig through an enormous mountain of data: old files, correspondence, all kinds of documents in dirty folders. You may think you are fully automated, but this is old-fashioned manual work. You simply must employ a lot of people who do nothing other than view and inventory files.’

Everything starts with the data

The big misunderstanding is that AI can help us get rid of data problems. “That’s not right,” says Buenen. ‘It’s the other way around. AI performs best based on structured and categorized data.

In other words: if you as a company or organization do not have your data management in order, you cannot make good use of AI applications. So, you’re missing the boat right at the start of the AI ​​revolution. Want to use ChatGTP in your business communication? Apply AI in an initial selection procedure for a vacancy? This only works well if you feed and train the system with a variety of reliable data. You need to know this, otherwise you will quickly unconsciously inject significant bias into your AI. If you want to be successful with AI, you will first have to focus on your data. Because everything starts with the data.’

Better business results

SynerScope, founded in 2011 as a spin-off from Eindhoven University, has developed a visual scanner that uses data inventories. “What we essentially do,” says Buenen, “is to create a map. We have always been good at that in the Netherlands. Nowadays we travel from A to B with a GPS map in the car. But where is the map that guides us through our data? With SynerScope you can automatically sort, label, and cluster your organization’s data – including the ‘dark data’.

Sorting by content is a very quick process. On this basis, possible labels are calculated for each cluster.’ Which, says Buenen, gives you, as a company or organization, full control over your own data and knowledge. Once you discover what data your company or organization has, you can make much more (or better) informed decisions. And with a digital transformation to the cloud in Microsoft Azure, you can take with you exactly what is important.

Buenen: ‘Well-labeled data increases the quality of the outcome of AI. You can tame AI with it. And by that I mean: ‘really committed to your specific goal, with more success, less risk and at much lower costs. You improve your business results by unlocking your (dark) data with SynerScope.’

 

Source: Elsevier – TopicTalks 19 – December 2023