Fig. 1.5.2 Diverse sources of textual data.In many cases, the sources of data are automated, so physically gathering data is not
much of a problem. But in some cases, the data exist on a physical medium such as
paper, and the data must pass through technology such as optical character recognition
(OCR) software. Or in other cases, the data exist as conversations and must pass through
voice recognition/transcription technology.
Usually, the physical gathering of data is the easiest part of doing analysis across the
corporation. Much more challenging is the logical resolution problem. The logical
resolution aspect of corporate data management addresses the issue of bringing together
many disparate sources of data and reading and processing the data seamlessly. There are
Chapter 1.5: Corporate Data Analysis