Data profiling allows organizations to examine and analyze data from various sources to understand its structure, quality, completeness, and other key characteristics. It’s essential for ensuring that data is fit for purpose, and can help identify any issues like inconsistencies, missing values, duplicates, and anomalies that could cause problems for downstream processes such as data integration, analytics, and reporting.
What is data profiling?
Data profiling is a technique used to assess the quality, structure, and content of data. It involves analyzing available information to identify patterns, relationships, and anomalies. The process helps organizations make informed decisions and find areas for improvement.
Data profiling typically involves the following steps:
- gathering data from various sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and other files,
- exploring the data and understanding its structure, content, and relationships,
- data cleaning which involves identifying and correcting errors in the data, such as missing values, duplicates, and inconsistencies,
- using statistical methods to analyze the data and identify patterns, trends, and anomalies,
- reporting the findings to stakeholders, such as business users, data scientists, and IT teams. Such a report should include a summary of the data, an assessment of its quality, and recommendations for improving data quality and accuracy.
Data profiling examples & benefits
There are many reasons why organizations should invest in data profiling. The top benefits are:
- improved data quality and accuracy,
- better decision-making based on trustworthy data,
- reduced risk of errors and data-related problems,
- increased efficiency and productivity by identifying and resolving issues before they cause downstream problems,
- improved regulatory compliance by ensuring data meets regulatory standards.
Common data profiling examples include analyzing customer data to identify duplicates, ensuring the accuracy and completeness of financial records, and detecting inconsistencies in supply chain data.
