Organizations have been using data analytics to improve their operations for a long time. Its primary users have been managers seeking to boost performance. But what happens when the power of data analytics gets in the hands of all employees? Energy Biz brought this news to us in their article, “Washington Gas puts self-service analytics to work.”

Washington Gas Light Co. is developing a self-service analytic operating model – calling it SANoP – that would enable all its employees to easily access the company’s data to help them do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.

Self-service data analytics software has become popular and there are entire companies focused on developing it. SANoP would be able to use artificial intelligence to pull data from wherever the data resides in Washington Gas’ information-technology systems to perform the tasks requested of it.  It would also allow users to ask questions or make requests in their everyday vocabulary due to its use of an ontology.

Of course we already know that ontologies and other controlled vocabularies help ensure consistency and standardization. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies to make their information findable.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.