Data analysis is a business process running from business objective setting through project planning, data assembly, data cleaning, data structuring, data analysis and data mining to results deployment and assessment. Web data analysis is no different in principle from data analysis but there are significant differences on an operational level.

The effort required at each stage of a project is typically:

• Definition of Business Objective 5%
• Project Planning & Management 5%
• Data Assembly, Cleaning & Structuring 70%
• Data Analysis & Mining 10%
• Results Deployment 10%

Specific outside expertise and experience may be needed at each or every stage of a project. Stretched in-house IT support teams often find the impact of the data cleaning and structuring task to be a particularly challenging workload addition until the processing is embedded in routine processing steps. Some organizations require one off help in the form of the focused application of a specific practical skill to get a job done to meet deadlines. Other organizations prefer to outsource the whole data management and analysis process.

Key Issues in Data Analysis