Likewise, many businesses today have vast amounts of data – historic new data. By using advanced analytics such as machine learning this data can become more meaningful – more valuable – specifically for the customers whose data it is.
More importantly Experian’s expertise and data sets can be incorporated with client data to offer an even bigger pot of opportunity for accessing greater insight – here we produce analytics at scale – and at speed. Essential tools for today’s big data economy.
The DataLabs was founded in 2010 in San Diego, then quickly expanded to the UK and Brazil, with the remit of driving innovation using analytics. Across the four labs we now have over 50 data scientists. It is a significant area of investment for Experian and our in-house capabilities for machine learning and artificial intelligence is something that we proactively offer as a service to help solve complex problems across a range of areas and markets.
“Data, if understood, can enhance customer relationships and take them to the next level. They can inform the conversation and help drive decisions and dialogue”
The DataLabs are here to find innovative ways of using data. To find ways of bringing value and finding new methods of analytics that bring better outcomes, which can better serve society as a result. The DataLabs often finds hidden signals within the data that are not obvious when exploring the different datasets. We therefore move from asking the machine to solve a problem, to the machine telling us what problem needs to be solved.
“There was a book published recently about innovation and the author wrote a chapter about the Experian DataLabs, alongside many other big brand analytical corporations and technology giants. It is exciting to associated at a similar level to these companies – but reflective too of what we do and why we’re therefore deserving of this recognition.”
The way in which data has grown has meant many businesses today are faced with significant challenges relating to the data. Through research we commissioned with Forrester, we can see that the top three business problems globally all result from barriers or blockages relating to data. In some scenarios, the challenge can seem too tricky to overcome. Mainly because of the lack of expertise, technical capability, or a lack of budget to place on research and development of the scale that’s needed, and isn’t connected to a specific ROI but built on a ‘test and learn’ approach.
We see competing and varying objectives across many businesses and many sectors. One consistency however is this lack of investment in analytics to solve problems. Not unsurprising as it is a considerable investment to make and something that cannot be done as a single task, but something that needs to be fundamentally driven into the business model as an ongoing investment of time and money.
This is where Experian comes in. The DataLabs entire remit is to help businesses solve problems and we have the investment, the resources, expertise and more to help make this happen – on point problems, or through ongoing problem solving. Why? Because we believe that to use data to its best ability, it needs to be used at speed, it needs to be scalable. Equally, any decision from a data set needs to be achieved with accuracy. The DataLabs help this happen and through the science and the data, we can bring the mathematics and the dedication of a global team – an infrastructure that’s equipped for test and learn and problem solving – at scale. We are equipped to do this task, drive this task and help.
“If a client has a data problem that they want to review or de-risk, we can do that for them by looking at the data and trying to solve the problem. If there is a solution, then we talk about the best approach to solving it.”