Data Preparation for Businesses: Unlocking the Potential of Data

In the following article, we guide you through the world of structured data and data preparation. What are structured data and how do they differ from their unstructured counterparts?

Let's discover together how you can effectively use structured data in your company to improve business processes and increase profitability.

How Data Preparation Masters the Challenge of Unstructured Data

When the Foundation Is Right

The key to successful automated text generation by the Text Robot remains well-structured data – the right data foundation. Part of this consists of master data, usually available from product marketing. This area contains an incredible amount of product information just waiting to be used for content automation.

However, not all master data are suitable for automated processing, as they are often available in different formats, incomplete, or contain redundant information.

The data field must exhibit certain properties to be considered structured, which are only achieved through targeted data preparation. Only then can the Text Robot automatically create beautiful text. Beautiful in this context means: informative, unique, SEO-optimized, value-adding, and grammatically correct.

Manual cleaning and formatting of this data is time-consuming and error-prone. Data preparation therefore usually requires systematic processes that ensure data can be processed correctly and consistently.

This is exactly where DataNaicer comes in. The tool by uNaice automates many of the fundamental steps of data preparation and offers user-friendly customization options for individual requirements.

Data Preparation in Focus: Optimized Product Data for Seamless Content Automation

Shop owners often have master data such as product descriptions that already contain the most important features in a single data field. While this may be practical for a header, it is useless for a Text Robot. Since data usually comes from different sources, this frequently creates even more data chaos.

Rich data fields contain a lot of wasted information because the attributes within them cannot be read differentially. On the other hand, if there is a separate data field for each attribute ([Material], [Dimensions], [Color]), a separate sentence can be created for each individual attribute. Thorough data preparation helps create abundant variation that excludes duplicate content from the outset.

Frequency and Fill Rate

While granularity is important, it makes no sense to create data fields that only apply to a few products. Here you need to weigh which attributes apply to as many products in the range as possible.

Quality Over Quantity: Using Data Preparation Smartly

In some cases, it can make sense to use sparsely filled attributes for automated content, namely when these attributes represent a special feature.

Individual data fields can relate to multiple products, making scalability super easy. The data field "Operating System" for a desktop computer can contain "Windows 10" – that's perfectly fine for a Text Robot.

How the Text Robot Works: The Role of Data Preparation

The Text Robot is essentially like a content department. Like one, it needs product data as an information source to generate meaningful text. But for that, data must be prepared into structured data.

What Are Unstructured Data?

• a red dress has the color "blue" stored
• empty fields
• some cars have "5" seats, while others have "five"

Summary: A Text Robot cannot work well with irregularities of any kind or empty fields. They also complicate any workflow in general.

What Are Structured Data?

Structured data are information that exists in a uniform format, for example to support search engines in interpreting and displaying search results. All information is provided in uniform data fields, making it easily accessible.

The Text Robot Algorithm

The algorithm determines the syntactic and grammatical framework of the text. Unlike an AI, the Text Robot does not make autonomous decisions and does not write unauthorized interpretations.

Sentence Templates and Extensions

Sentence templates and extensions create template text that can be expanded with numerous synonyms, phrases, and additions, providing a great deal of variation with rich informative content.

Rule Sets

Through the use of precise rule sets, the text sounds as if you had written it yourself. It is defined in advance exactly which rules are needed so that the text meets your needs regarding language choice, language coloring, style, and tonality.

Data Like a Fill-in-the-Blank Exercise

If the data has been correctly maintained through clean data preparation, it will also be correctly deployed in the text later. Practically, you can think of it like a fill-in-the-blank exercise, where the Text Robot inserts the correct attributes into the designated gaps.

No Structured Data Foundation Available?

You are not alone with this problem. But don't worry! A missing data structure is not an insurmountable hurdle.

During our collaboration with customers, we take care of the data and check it for structure and completeness. An inadequate data foundation can be brought back up to speed through our intervention.

From Data to Flowing Text: What a Text Robot Can Do

With the Text Robot, a variety of design possibilities open up that go far beyond fill-in-the-blank text.

Example: Opel Corsa – The following text is the beginning of a blog post about the Opel Corsa F, a charming city car.

A comparison of the data with the final text reveals that some parts don't match. These are not errors but deliberate adjustments as part of the data preparation, so that the content flows naturally into the text.

Interpretations and Adjustments

Meta Data and Data Preparation

So-called meta data, such as sales figures, return data, reviews from other buyers, shop info, or manufacturer data, are of particular interest for large e-shops, as they enable the Text Robot to interpretively analyze information.

A low return rate suggests that customers are extremely satisfied with the product. A sentence like the following can be generated: "A particularly popular product that is guaranteed to give you lasting pleasure."

What Else the Text Robot Can Do

To help you see which doors structuring your data opens, here is a brief overview:

Conclusion

Through intelligent data management, clever data preparation, and the use of structured data, companies can use data to their advantage. Sooner or later, this is guaranteed to lead to a decisive competitive advantage.