These vendors have often aggressively exploited new technology to capture market advantage. Data mining is such a technology. The company has a wealth of data unrivaled in its breadth and depth, and the understanding of the relevant markets that is necessary to bring this technology to customers successfully. These markets use large databases and need the power of data mining to achieve a better understanding of their data. Both processes require either sifting through an immense amount of material, or intelligently probing it to find exactly where the value resides.
Data mining automates the process of finding predictive information in large databases.
A typical example of a predictive problem is targeted marketing. Data mining uses data on past promotional mailings to identify the targets most likely to maximize return on investment in future mailings. Other predictive problems include forecasting bankruptcy and other forms of default, and identifying segments of a population likely to respond similarly to given events. Automatic discovery of previously unknown patterns. Data mining tools sweep through databases and identify previously hidden patterns in one step.