Finding Your Current Data

If you run some type of organization you most likely have some forms of data around you that would be useful. The type of business you have will determine the outputs of data. If you have customers then you will have customer data and purchase data. Each transaction creates a record in your system which is useful to you.

General Business Data

Some things are universal in most buisinesses and organizations. Organizations are made up of people, these people have employment records, incomes received from the organization, times that they work, and records of what they did. Organizations also have transaction data. They collect money and they pay people money. This data has amounts sent, the date that it was sent or recieved and also the date that the actual work was done. There is also some type of communication that must be done before this money is sent. People either talk on the phone, through email, through written documents, or in person to arrange how and when work will be done and money transfered. Governmental records are also required for most businesses and organizations. When the company was founded, how much money it made, the amount of tax they must pay, what type of business they are, how many employees they have.

All of this is general data that is collected by default for every organization but data gets more speicifc when we look at individual industries and operations.

Industry specific Data

We will look at 5 example case studies to give you ideas that you can compare to your own industry.

1. Timber Company (Forestry/Tree Management)

A timber company main job is to manage land with trees on it and then when the time is correct they cut down the trees and sell them or process them into lumber which eventaully become building materials. They must first purchase or lease land, so the price and time of these transactions is written down. Foresters are sent onto this land to survey it and collect information about the type of trees, the age, the diameter and the amount of trees present. Then at some point a harvest is done, It is recorded how many trees were cut down and how much timber they contained. These are sold to a mill and a sale price for the trees are recorded. The transportation of the trees also costs money so it is recorded the price of fuel, the distance travelled, and the overall transportation cost.

A Vacationers Hotel

An investor pays to have a hotel built. He acquires a piece of land storing a contract, and legal documents with the sale price the purchase data and the zoning condiitons. He purchaess plans from an architect and engineer, and fills out goernmental forms that contain the type of building, the amount of rooms, the total value.

He then gets quotes from different contractors for the cost of construction, these include the prices of building materials and labor and the timeframe of the project. Then he constructs the building and records the time it took to actually complete, the total price, and any mistakes or slowdowns that occured along the way. The hotel is now built and can start having people stay there. Each day different amounts of people book the hotel, they book online, in person, over the phone. Some people hear about the hotel through online advertisements, from googling it, from chatgpt, from friends, or from seeing it in person. Some people stay for a long time and some people just one day. Depending on the season there is sometimes a lot of vacancy and some holiday weekends there is very little vacancy.

Insurance Company

This year there was a drought and farmers lost a lot of their crops. It deeply hurt the farmers, they had to put off mantinence, some had to sell animals, and others had to sell their farms. So an investor decided to start an insurance company so that farmers could pay a little bit each year and then in bad years they wouldn't be so hurt. The investor writes a policy that charges a set amount each year and provides the farmers with assistance in the situation where they have a bad year. Each contract is stored and recorded with the amount of money the farm is insured for, how much money the insurance policty will cost each year, the type of farm, and the location of the farm. Over time some of these farmers eventually need to use a policy due to natural events. It is recorded when the natural event occured, how much damage it caused, how much of a payout was reqiured.

Creative Studio

A designer sees that his friends and family really like dogs. He has a dream and decides to start making fun games and films about dogs. He puts together some money from friends and family and hires some other designers to start creating content. Each day the studio writes the text for 3 movie segments. They also create images of dogs, each designer records how long it takes to create an assets and saves each iteration/histry of an asset. The 3d modeler createing many differnet 3d models of different breeds and types of dogs. Around every 2 weeks they publish a new episode of their show about dogs. Online people rate each episode of their show and there is a subreddit where fanatics of the show often chat about new episodes and whether they liked them or not. About every year they put out a video game. People buy the game and steam records how much playtime they have, the achivements that are most completed by users. People rate the game on steam with a 1-5 star rating system and a quick text snippet. The game servers record which parts of the game people most like to play, how much time they spend on it.

Power Company

A power company supplies power for the local region. They have a mix of gas generators, wind turbines, and solar arrays. They bulid power lines to reach new regions and add new houses as they get built. The power stations ramp up and down based on the power load that is pulled from the lines they record the total power produced at each power plant, the current percnetage power level the plants are running at. They also have to bill clients so they record the amount of electricity that each home or business is using aswell.

Mining Company

A mining company currently looks at different parcels for sale or lease and sends surveyors to parcles which seem of value. The surveyors do core drills to determine what kind of minerals are in the ground and in what amounts. Then once they find an appropriate location they setup a mind. They purchase heavy equipement, build workshops for mechanics and setup the ore processing plants. The initial permits, building plans, and equipement purchase records were all recorded. Each day the mine operates its recordded how much ore is mined and sold, how much fuel is burned and expense reports for repairs of machines and the plant is recorded.