Sourcing and Managing Business Data

This unit teaches students how to find, acquire, secure, store, and manage the data small businesses need to answer operational and strategic questions. Students will evaluate internal, external, and sensor/IoT sources, weigh acquisition and staffing options, plan storage and stewardship, and estimate costs and benefits in preparation for analysis and decision-making in the next unit.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze and categorize internal, external, and sensor-based data sources (e.g., public datasets, LinkedIn, HealthData.gov, IoT and Wi‑Fi signals) to determine their relevance and fitness for specific small business questions
• Evaluate data acquisition strategies (in-house development, outsourcing, purchase, and open data) by comparing costs, required skills, ownership and licensing, security risks, and data quality
• Apply data management and storage principles to design a scalable plan that addresses volume, access, security, retention, and integration of small and big datasets for a small business use case
• Demonstrate the ability to prioritize and prepare sourced data for analysis by outlining preprocessing steps, ownership/security measures, and a cost–benefit justification for pursuing the dataset