Organizational Data Mining

Summary

Many organizations today possess substantial quantities of business information but have very little real business knowledge. A recent survey of 450 business executives reported that managerial intuition and instinct are more prevalent than hard facts in driving organizational decisions. To reverse this trend, businesses of all sizes would be well advised to adopt Organizational Data Mining (ODM). ODM is defined as leveraging Data Mining tools and technologies to enhance the decision-making process by transforming data into valuable and actionable knowledge to gain a competitive advantage. ODM has helped many organizations optimize internal resource allocations while better understanding and responding to the needs of their customers. The fundamental aspects of ODM can be categorized into Artificial Intelligence (AI), Information Technology (IT), and Organizational Theory (OT), with OT being the key distinction between ODM and Data Mining. In this chapter, we introduce ODM, explain its unique characteristics, and report on the current status of ODM research. Next we illustrate how several leading organizations have adopted ODM and are benefiting from it. Then we examine the evolution of ODM to the present day and conclude our chapter by contemplating ODM’s challenging yet opportunistic future.