What is Unstructured Data?
Unstructured data is data that is not defined by a particular model, or stored in a particular format, or also known as schema. Types of unstructured data include:
- Audio Files
- Images
- Video
- PDFs
- PowerPoint
- Social Media Posts, Comments, and Likes
- Word documents
How is Unstructured Data Managed by Organizations Today?
Unstructured data makes up 80-90 percent of all data in the world today. This unstructured data usually gets stored in a data lake until a data model can be developed so it can be structured and used for business and customer value.
One way to look at all this unstructured data is the potential opportunity to deploy it for various business needs and applications.
How Does a Customer Data Platform Manage Unstructured Data?
In order to get value from your data, you need to get it in shape so that it has some structure and common formatting so it can be combined into unified profiles. Data collection needs to be standardized in order to integrate successfully. And more often than not that data is fractured and is residing in disparate silos across your enterprise and business units. So, you need to deploy the right technology solution to gather that data and combine it together in a standardized fashion.
A customer data platform (CDP) is able to integrate, unify and deliver structured, unstructured and semi-structured to the right teams across the organization. Organizations are also using CDPs to ensure that data is secure and compliant with emerging global data privacy regulations.
With data that is standardized and integrated into unified profiles, enterprise businesses can market against a single source of truth. Transforming unstructured data into structured data with a CDP and the right support staff can be the differentiator brands need to stay ahead of the competition and stay relevant to their customers.
