There are unlimited uses of data in daily life, business, profession, research, education, media, development, science, and problem-solving works. The most important thing in all of this process is decision making in which data analysis, data mining, data science, analytics helps.
In general, here you can read and learn what is data. Data is most important element in technology. Data is both input and output in computer. And here you can read and learn what is data in computer.
Whatever we do and whatever we are looking to do in life and in machines is mostly influenced by data. Our decisions and choices that we choose based on data or without data impact the input and output or results.
We all make decisions. Whether it’s about business, life, education and entertainment. We all want to follow and execute our goals and plans. We all want experiences, excitements, satisfactions, productivity and various other things. Even the answer you’re looking for is also a data. This post and it’s content also a data. Right now, it’s helping you to learn about the uses of data.
So, data is everywhere and we can use data in almost every technical or non-technical activity. So, in this post, we’re explaining in following points uses of data in various field, activities, works, profession and organizations:
The most important thing to remember is that data can be fake or real. Data can be mined and scraped and it can be manipulated for specific wrong or good reasons. Only trust on the data that is from authenticated or real sources. If something is looking too much true, then always investigate that before. Don’t build your mind, life and business on fake data.
1. Uses of data in our daily life:
How many likes and shares you get on your content is data. This data will help you to think what type of content works and what’s not. Next time, you can plan the content to get most likes and shares.
- When you buy products based on reviews then you are using data to buy products or services or spend your money.
- When you see the weather data you make decisions to travel or not. In this decision you have used data.
- When you file ITR or fill the income tax form then actually you’re using the data of your income, expenses, balance and liabilities.
- Cricket match score card, score card in visualization of chart is also a data.
So, data and data visualization are used in various works in our daily life. All of this is to make your decision making faster, accurate, less risky, balanced and easy.
For example, not all can understand quickly which cricket team is winning in the current situation of the match, but through line chart and colors or bars those are not good in numbers can also see and analyze the situation.
When someone says on Internet that they are earning $2000 or $1000 in last 15 days then it’s hard to believe until they don’t show the proof. And the proof is the data of their income reports. But also remember that data in websites screenshots can also be manipulated to through editing the html tags behind the website in browser.
Uses of data in students’ life:
The 1st professional use of data starts in our life when we’re in students’ life. We get our class and performance report in the form of data. For example, in Mathematics Vijay got 80 marks out of 100. There are 10 questions and each question is in 10 marks.
The performance of students or the knowledge of student is measured through marks or data. If I got 80 out of 100 it means Vijay is good in mathematics. And those get 95 out of 100 is more than excellent or toppers.
Through data we can also measure in which subjects we have to focus more. All of this is the use of data.
Data can measure the performance in the past and can predict the future. But it can’t change the future and present. Personally, I don’t consider the talents of students based on his/her marks. Instead, I personally try to test that student in various subjects and activities. So that I will get data about the core strength of the student.
Even I use challenging exercises and tricky question to test the pressure handling, leadership and management skills as well.
All of this process can be automated through computers and technologies. But things change. They are not always the same. So, use data for build thinking but don’t make the assumption. The data you’re getting today, will not be the same tomorrow.
Related: Importance of Computer Education in Schools for Students
Uses of data in Education:
In education data is used and can be used to build better education system, courses and learning activities. For example, students performed very well in civil engineering exams and especially after studying certain type of syllabus.
But 90 out 100 civil engineers failed to crack the campus interview. Now this is data. Now after the analysis and investigation of this data, the civil engineering syllabus is changed.
Data can be used to find loopholes and for the development of education system.
For example, the question how many business professors or teachers started their own business or worked with business professional?
- How many teachers, have written their own books? etc.
- Through data we can analyze how government or departments are spending the education budget.
- How much budget is invested by the government on building the good employable education system?
- Does government invest more on infrastructure or on the salary of teachers?
- Where budget was not invested? Where it’s needs now to be invested?
So, to take next decision, you need data in the answer of these questions. Once you will get data you will analyze it through data analyst experts or through software and also by education leaders. And as a leader or authority then you will build your conclusion and project report. After this you will send it to your higher authority to allocated budget and permission for certain projects based on data.
Explore More:
How important is technology in education
How has technology improved education?
Uses of data in banks:
When you need a loan for a car or home from bank then bank will check your cibil score. Actually, they check your past transactional data. when it’s through software, it was automatically analyzed. The software or this function in the website was built through conditional operators and logics in the code (programming) such as (IF, Else, And, Or, Not, While, For) etc. So that software or function display the conclusion.
If data is good, you will get loan else you will not get. Now this decision is made after data analysis. The benefit of this for bank or managers is that they will not be able or cannot distribute loans to those not have good cibil score data.
Uses of data in business management:
Management of business operations and activities for highest level of productivity you have to use data. Data is used in business management to track the performance or productivity of employees, machines, software, resources, and infrastructure.
For example, you have SaaS based productivity software package such as CRM or Microsoft 365 for 10 users or employees. But only 7 users are using the tool from last 5 months. And you’re paying $10 or $100 per month per user. So, the productivity from this software is not fully utilized.
When you get this data or details you will have option to add 3 more users else customize the plan as per current business needs.
While in big businesses or multi-level companies cost, profit, business operations, teams and innovation activities and decision making are automated. Software’s are used to automate various parts of business, whether it’s sale, purchase, supply, distribution, delivery, tracking, income and expenses.
Software is programed with data modules. Those data modules are trained through code (programming) to analyze (coded) the data and track every input and output, database, customer data, employee data, loss and profit data etc. This way business is automated. Even to track the progress of project, delegation of work, reporting and almost everything is automatic.
Without correct data or best data tracking strategies and logic it’s not possible to automate business and increase productivity. Even you can’t build software to automate your business without data. That’s why data analytics important in business.
Explore:
Uses of data in medical science:
During covid-19 you saw that how data helped the government, hospitals, doctors and medical support staff.
For example, the process can be like this:
1st role was to build the database of covid patient. In this each covid patient data was collected such as name, location, age and various other identification.
In database (such as SQL Server, My SQL, Mongo DB) etc. patient profit tables were created. In that table more than one column was created based on the data such as for ID (number) column, name, father/mother name, location, phone number, symptoms, duration, time etc.
Not only just patient database, but various other databases were also created based on the solutions strategies of the team or organizations.
All of that were linked with HTML web pages or websites. Where the patient form details were entered. The data was collected on the form or (I don’t know exactly) and then added that on the form. When user or operator or admin clicked on the submit then data is automatically added in the database.
Now that databases are I think distributed publicly through API. So that various other organizations can use that data for the prevention, building new application and programs to fight with covid-19 and aware the public about its expansion.
Here you can find various medical API You can use these data API to build medical application and solutions.
Similar to that, vaccination development was also possible because of the data analysis. And you also noticed that your details are collected before vaccination. That was the data that helped government, health departments or ministries to track and report the vaccination goals.
When you saw in news that 80% of citizen are now vaccinated or 1000000 people are vaccinated double doze, then it’s because of health department analyzed that collected or managed data based on the population.
This is just an example of the uses of data in medical and health.
So, the process in example, I shared above is based on my thinking, I don’t know exactly how covid data process was created. But I am sure that it’s similar to that. I have shared this with you only so that you can understand or get ideas behind the uses of the data during covid or in medical science or health.
There are various other uses of data in health or medical science such as for the research on new medicine, treatment, operations and new guidelines as well.
Discover: Top 10 Examples, How has technology changed healthcare
Uses of data in leadership works:
As a leader you have to take wide variety of business and organizational decision. Behind these decisions can be your courage, goals, strategies, responsibilities. So whenever you take the decision such as to hire new employees, you also check the data to find its impact, benefits, cost, profit calculations.
Similarly, to buy new equipment’s or machines for production, you also check and compare the production, budget, utilization data.
Data helps you think critically and creatively. Data helps you to take good decision. But taking good decision in business is not enough until they are not executed the way they need to be.
The reason to use data in decisions is to not mesmerize the production, marketing, cash flow process. At least if decision goes wrong, at least you will not lose the current track.
While many times, you have to take decision against data. It’s also important that to make good decision, you have to have good data analytical skills. So that you can think about the problem and solutions on different angles.
In business using data also provide competitive advantages. The company have good customer data can create and provide personalized solution or better solutions to it’s customers than a company with without data.
Explore: Importance of leadership skills in life
Uses of data in marketing:
Data is used in the marketing to build marketing strategies, selection of marketing platform, types of advertisements, color selection of graphics, branding message, content strategies and timing. The data is collected and monitored while customers, visitors interact with website, apps, advertising, links, products and services.
For example,
- How many impressions advertisement got on social media and how many on blog website?
- Where is the CTR is higher?
- What are age and interest of people those clicked or visited the landing page?
- What is the conversion rate of social media and blog visitors?
- What type of colored advertisement got more impression?
- What type of hosting package is purchased by the most of the customers?
etc.
Companies and businesses also do survey, launch demo products, lancing pages, tracking apps or code and various other methods to find out the target audience. So that they can launch fully targeted marketing campaign.
Due to that marketing cost is reduced and conversion rate is increased. And business gets more sales and profits.
That’s only because of data. Here data helped to build right product, right marketing strategy and campaigns.
Learn more: Why do web analytics play an important role in the success of a website
Uses of data to solve problem:
Data helps businesses and organizations to solve technical, production, marketing and supply chain problems. Actually, as I said before that data helps you think strategically and intelligently.
For example, when you get problem in the website such as slow loading speed, you will get data about the post, pages, content and code through website speed testing tools that can be reason for the slow loading speed. When you have data, you can investigate and solve the problem.
So if you have the data you can solve or make the process faster to solve the business and organizational problems.
Uses of data in product development and production:
Whether you are creating content, working on website SEO, manufacturing physical product. Generating data or using data analysis make the big the difference in the speed, cost, profit, margin, quality and user experiences.
All types of data analysis works and methods starts with the problems and questions.
Following are the common business problems and examples?
- How to increase the profit?
- How to get more traffic to website?
- How to increase sales?
- How to increase conversion rate?
- How to speed up the production of content?
- In which branch you’re getting more sales?
etc.
You can get thousands of answers to these questions as an information or solution.
For example,
How to increase profit?
The general answer is increase sales and reduce cost. That can be a good answer. But how you can execute this solution?
The execution of this solution is not easy if it’s not divided or without strategies. And to build strategies and understand the exact reason and problem, you need to analyze data.
- Such as you have to find out, in which products you’re getting more profit?
- What are the demands of products in the market?
- Are you competitors making profit?
- What are the things that increasing the cost?
etc.
Now you need the data about the cost. Such as office rent, raw material, marketing, staff etc. Now if you found that marketing is costing you more. Now you can make the decision to build new marketing strategy. It can be SEO or social media or online advertising.
So data help to find to go deeper into the problem. For example, if the problem is in B category, but you’re doing the treatment of C then then it will not work. This happens without data.
For example, if the reason of the lower conversion rate is in the landing page content, then you have to treat and re-build landing page. But if the problem is in the product, then re-building or treating landing page will not impact the conversion rate positively.
That’s how data helps to find the real cause of problem. And when you know the problem, you can solve it.
So as per the above examples data is also used similarly in SEO, Marketing, eCommerce and building security tools. Data is not limited to technology tools, businesses and methods but also used in non-technical works such as in politics, agriculture, news and society.
Conclusion:
The top 3 uses of data as per my understanding are following:
- Finding the problem and to discover the opportunities for growth not matter whether it’s related to business, technology, science, governance and society.
- Building great product/solution/user experiences/polices and environment.
- Predicting future problems and challenges, then preparing in advance for that.
So, friends, I shared what I know so far about the Data with you. I hope you liked this post. So please share this with others as well.