Data Sources: The Pillar of Business Analytics

The hierarchy of intelligence, within the scope of Business Intelligence , recognizes that, to achieve knowledge and transform it into wisdom, it is necessary to have quality information, with information being the result of processing, organizing and structuring data, in a given context. It can therefore be said that data is the basis of wisdom. Without data, we will not be able to have business-related information, extract knowledge from it and make informed and sensible decisions. As mentioned by Professor W. Edwards Deming, a well-known statistician:

"We trust in God; everyone else brings data."

Whenever we think about business data, most of us think about internal data, data “owned” by the company itself. In the case of the Hotel industry in particular, we think of PMS ( Property Management System ) data – reservations, guest profiles, current accounts, among others present in PMS – or accounting and human resources data available in ERP ( Enterprise Resource Planning ) systems. – such as financial information, number of employees, etc. However, nowadays, with the ubiquity of the internet, external data sources surpass internal sources. The number of sources from which it is possible to obtain valuable data capable of helping to solve problems or optimize tasks has grown exponentially in recent years.

Some of these sources are made available by companies in exchange for a specific rate, as is the case with the data present in STR Global 's comparative assessments , for example; or flight arrivals , based on your departure point or plane capacity. On the other hand, some of these tools are completely free, such as weather forecasts, competitors' online prices, competitors' social reputations, exchange rates, travel safety risks, among others. These data sources, as shown in Table 1, by way of example, can be extremely useful in different analyzes or predictive models.

Table 1: Data sources and possible applications (example)

However, while data in internal sources can be extracted in a “relatively easy” way, either by direct access to databases or by exporting to Excel/CSV files, the same does not always apply to external sources.

Usually, if external data sources are a paid service, the companies that provide this service make the data available in different formats: Excel files, CSV files or through web services so that the extraction, transformation and loading process can be carried out in a completely automated way. Although some free data sources are available in the same format, this is not the case for all. Some are available on websites or web pages and the data has to be collected manually or automatically with the help of a web scraping tool . In either case, much of the process of extracting and transforming data to make it workable for an analyst or executive must be done by the hotel's IT department or an external consultant.

On the other hand, if an analyst or executive is able to merge all these data sources, they will be able to build better analyses, more easily understand patterns, trends and anomalies, and even make better forecasts and predictive models - in short: optimize the business and create a competitive advantage for your company.

Of course, having data alone does not result in any added value. The accumulated knowledge and specialization of the hotel executive are always very important in the decision-making process. But if the executive does not have access to data to support a decision, he runs the serious risk of deciding based on opinions rather than facts. In turn, these opinions can often be based on incorrect conceptions or perceptions. As Jim Barksdale said...

"If we have data, let's look at it. If we all have opinions, let's go with mine."