Glossary

datakulture has compiled a glossary of terms and definitions that every data-driven professional needs to know to navigate the evolving landscape of data science and analytics.

All

A³

Anomaly detection

In data perspective, any data point that deviates from the rest of the data is called anomaly. Anomaly detection is finding out these unusual patterns and deviations in data that don’t confide to the norm.

ACID property

ACID denotes the characteristics of database transactions, and ACID properties full form are atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability. Every database must have these properties to ensure reliability and completeness of each transaction.

Automated KYC

Automated KYC is the process where companies and financial institutions automate the entire user and document verification, which is otherwise paper-based, slow, and time-consuming.

B²

Batch processing

Batch processing is a data movement term that denotes the collection, storage, and processing of data in batches over a time period. It’s the execution of a series of tasks in batches at scheduled times without manual intervention.

Behavioral biometrics

Behavioral biometrics is observing human behavior, click, and browsing movements to verify and confirm a user identity and find out anything suspicious. It could be as simple as analyzing how a user swipes, clicks, or dwells on an application, interface, or any digital device.

C⁸

Cloud data warehouse

Cloud data warehouse is a storage repository which stores your organizational data in the cloud rather than on-premise infrastructure. Cloud data warehousing offers flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solutions for data storage, querying, and analytics.

Customer support KPIs

Customer support KPIs are measurable values to assess the effectiveness of your customer support team.

Customer onboarding

Customer onboarding is the process of helping customers start using a new product or a service successfully, which can be digital, physical, or both.

Credit risk

Credit risk is a banking and finance term, meaning the financial risk a lender faces under the conditions their repayment failure – loan repayment, credit card bills, or bond payment. In simple terms, credit risk is a potential stage where a borrower can’t or won’t pay the money they owe, causing financial risk to the lender.

Customer sentiment analytics

Customer sentiment analytics is the process of analyzing and understanding emotions behind customer feedback, support calls, and other messages. Sentiment analytics turns all these millions of categorical data into chunkable reports, making it easier to understand for marketing, sales, and customer support teams.

Cash flow tracker

Cash flow tracker is a financial tool that helps businesses track the inflow and outflow of money, expenditures, and revenue in a business.

Churn prediction

Churn prediction is the process of predicting users who are likely to stop using a product or service in the near future. Here, the user group could mean customers or employees of a company.

Customer data platforms

Customer data platform is a centralized database that combines customer data from multiple sources, online, offline, cloud systems, and on-premises sources, into a unified view.

D¹³

Data discovery

Data discovery is the process of collecting data from various sources, categorizing them, and preparing them for analysis.

Data fabric

Data fabric is a modern data management architecture. It integrates and unifies data management, governance, and security across hybrid environments.

Data lineage

Data lineage is a data management practice that explains the entire lifecycle of the data from how it's created to how it's transformed until it reaches its destination.

Data mart

A data mart is a storage repository focused on a specific line of business, e.g. a marketing data mart that stores centralized data of the marketing department. This way, marketing users don’t have to search the organization-wide database to get insights.

Data transformation

Data transformation is changing data from one format, structure, or type to another to make it suitable for analysis. Think of this as prepping ingredients before starting to cook.

Data anonymization

Data anonymization is a data protection process that hides sensitive and identifiable information with random characters before sharing the data for analysis or research purposes.

Data cleansing

Data cleansing is a data quality improvement process that involves removing duplicates, errors, and inconsistencies to make it more usable.

Data masking

Data masking is a security measure to hide your data by replacing it with dummy characters.

Data partitioning

Data partitioning is a database management process about splitting large datasets into manageable portions called partitions.

Data processing

Data processing is the series of steps involved in collecting, transforming, and organizing raw data into meaningful insights.

Data swamp

Data swamping refers to an unorganized data repository that is flooded with massive amounts of data, making it challenging to derive meaningful insights.

Document digitization

Document digitization is the process of converting physical records into digital files with the help of scanners, OCRs, and AI tools. Physical records including invoices, bills, financial records, and other physical documents into electronically accessible formats (PDF, JPEG, PNG, etc.), that could be stored, accessed, and managed on cloud or system storage.

Digital lending

Digital lending is the process of offering and managing loans through digital platforms—without the need for face-to-face interactions, bank visits, neck-breaking paperwork and documentation.

E³

eCommerce KPIs

eCommerce KPIs are the performance indicators, denoting customer behavior, growth, and profitability of an eCommerce business.

ETL

ETL (extract, transform, and load) is about integrating data from various sources, transforming them into a standard format, and loading into the destination.

Experiential retail

Experiential retail is a modernized retail store concept where retailers deliver more than products, focusing on making the experience memorable.

F¹

Finance KPIs

Finance KPIs are values that can help you estimate how well your company is achieving your financial goals. It gives you a peek into the financial health, assets and expenses, and cash flow of past and present.

H¹

HR KPIs

HR KPIs are useful, relevant, and measurable metrics for HR teams to assess the performance of human capital and resources. It’s an indicator of the impact of workforce management, employee engagement, hiring, retention, and more.

I⁴

Identity resolution

Identity resolution is the process of finding the unique identity of a customer while creating a unified customer database. It’s done by linking all the customer engagement data and matching it to the right identity of the customer, avoiding duplicates, messy integrations, and wrong targeting.

Insurance analytics

Insurance analytics refers to the usage of data analysis, real-time data monitoring, machine learning and AI techniques to get insights from insurance data.

Inventory audit

Inventory audit is a counting or validation process of stocks in inventory to ensure if the existing levels match with what's recorded in inventory systems.

Inventory tracking

Inventory tracking is a supply chain process that tracks the quantity of goods or products as they move from one stage of supply chain to another—warehousing, production, logistics, shelves, or customer destination.

L¹

Legacy systems

Legacy system is an outdated piece of software, tool, or technology that’s still in use, even though there are many modern alternatives available. In simpler terms legacy system definition means old computer or hardware programs built with old and obsolete tech stack.

M⁴

Marketing KPIs

Marketing teams take up so many roles wisely - SEO, paid channels, advertising, content creation, and more. How do they know how well these efforts turn out? Marketing KPIs can answer that.

Master data management

Master data is the most important data assets of an organization, like customer data, product data, etc. The intricate process of managing, organizing the organization’s critical data assets in a clear, consistent, and accurate manner is master data management.

Metadata management

Metadata management is the process of organizing, managing, and updating metadata in a central repository.

Mortgage processing

Mortgage processing is the end-to-end processing of the home loan by lenders, banks, and financial institutions—managing and automating processes from start to end: applications, approvals, disbursement, repayment, and closing.

O¹

Order fulfilment

Order fulfilment is the end-to-end process from when a customer places an order till it gets delivered. This involves receiving order, packing, sending the package, and delivering the order. In modern context, order fulfilment might also include handling returns and exchanges.

P¹

POS data

POS (point of sales) data is the sales information captured at retail stores with items purchased, bill amount, customer ID, and more.

R⁵

Retail automation

Retail automation is the process of involving technology to simplify and streamline day-to-day retail operations and scale better without involving manual effort.

Retail personalization

Retail personalization is the use of data, AI, and other digital technologies to deliver customized experiences to every customer, across physical and digital stores.

Retail shrinkage

Retail shrinkage is an inventory error and loss that accounts for lost goods, which happens due to reasons: shoplifting, stock damages, supply chain issues, tracking errors, or other operational inefficiencies.

RFID management

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) inventory management uses stickers, tags, or chips to identify items in inventory and track their movement across lifecycle.

Risk profiling

Risk profiling is a process of measuring the amount of risk a person, entity, or an organization, is willing to undertake, about a transaction, investment, process, or a decision.

S⁷

Serverless architecture

Serverless architecture is a cloud resources management concept where the user only focuses on running applications, while the cloud provider manages the dynamic infrastructure needs.

Stock replenishment

Stock replenishment is an inventory and warehousing process, which is about replacing goods, materials, or products in the right quantities at the right time, before the existing ones run out.

Sales KPIs

Sales KPIs are the measure of how well a sales team is performing and the impact of this performance on a company's financial health. By measuring sales KPIs, a company or a sales head can understand the effectiveness of their sales strategies and sharpen them further, addressing the loopholes.

Sales per square foot

Sales per square foot is a major retail KPI that explains the efficiency of a retail store in making sales from its physical selling space.

SKU Optimization

SKU (Stock Keeping Units) optimization is the process of managing stock-keeping-units and promoting, retaining, and to improve inventory efficiency, reduce inventory costs, and ultimately store, retain, or discontinue the right product at the right time.

Store layout optimization

Store layout optimization is a retail concept which aims at improving store sales through store layout changes. Think of this as rearranging the store in a way that every product gets maximum attention from customers.

Store traffic

Store traffic, also known as foot traffic, is a retail and eCommerce metric that denotes the number of visitors to the mortar-and-brick or online store during a particular time.

T¹

Text analytics

Text analytics is the process of extracting meaningful information from raw, unstructured, and multi-formatted categorical data and presenting the contextual data to aid with decision-making.

U¹

Unified commerce

Unified commerce is a retail/eCommerce strategy that’s about centralizing all retail, POS, CRM, and backend systems into one integrated platform.