A few weeks ago I went on a treasure hunt. Now, I’m a big time nerd, so what I was digging for may not be what you’d expect to encounter on one of these excursions. There were no pirates, no cannons, no hooks or peg legs. Nope just data. Lots of data. And while the results aren’t pure gold they are definitely valuable to us, our clients and the industry.

I’m talking about data mining and we recently explored the data our consultants had gathered over their 50+ bank visits in 2008 using our RiskKey tool. The guys will be following up with blog posts about each of our most common findings, but I wanted to take some time to talk about the process in general and encourage you to explore the data the have at your fingertips.

Realize you are sitting on a gold mine

The amount of data that you have at your disposal (especially at a core vendor level) is border line ridiculous. You tons of transactional data. Even beyond that you have data about customer contact and interactions. On top of it all, you have information about your employees and their activities and habits. Each of these areas could heavily influence your institutions actions by improving customer relationships, marketing, and even internal work flows.

Don’t get overwhelmed

With this much data it’s easy to get scared away. (I know even looking at the 10k assessment our guys did made the room spin for just a bit.) Realize that you are sitting at the data buffet and there is only so much room on your plate.

Start somewhere

You don’t have to find the golden goose on your first dig. Start by looking at small specific areas and then broaden your efforts as you become more comfortable. Maybe you want to see the most visited external website by your staff this month or what month had the most on time loan payments. These may seem like small starts, but they are necessary to start uncovering the really valuable game changing data.

Use it for good (It has now become your super power!)

Do more than say “Wow, that’s neat.” Use what you’ve uncovered. Use it internally to make decisions about policies and procedures going forward. Even consider sharing some of it with others. You might just be surprised at the different ways a fresh set of eyes will see the data you present.

I hope this helps encourage you to take a look at some of the data you have lying and around and start being proactive with it. If you have any questions about the RiskKey data mining, data mining in your FI, or want to share examples of how data mining has helped your institution, hit up the comments.

- Mark