問27
頻出度★★★
事業活動に関する大量の情報を収集し, 分析して, 事業の意思決定や業務遂行に活用する能力を育成したい。このとき, 実施する研修のテーマとして, 最も適切なものはどれか。
平成24年度 春期 ITパスポート試験 問27
ストラテジ系企業活動 › 業務分析・データ利活用
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 27
Incorrectア
Groupware is software that bundles functions such as email, electronic bulletin boards, schedule management, meeting room reservation, document sharing, and workflow, making information sharing and communication inside an organization smooth and thereby supporting collaborative work. It is a tool that supports contact between people and the exchange of schedules and documents, not a mechanism for analyzing accumulated large volumes of data to extract useful knowledge. Even as a training theme, what learners would acquire is how to use information-sharing tools, which does not lead to developing the analytical ability the question asks for.
- イ
正解 The correct answer is イ, Data Mining. As the word mining (digging) suggests, data mining is a technique for digging into the mountain of data a company has accumulated in large volumes and pulling out the useful knowledge and patterns buried in it. Methods such as statistical analysis, correlation analysis, clustering (grouping similar items together), association analysis (finding relationships such as items bought at the same time), decision trees, and machine learning are applied to huge volumes of data such as POS sales records, web access logs, call center contact records, and members' purchase histories, in order to discover regularities, correlations, and trends that people would never notice just by looking at the data casually. A famous example is the discovery of the co-purchase pattern that “customers who buy disposable diapers also tend to buy beer,” and the aim reaches all the way to connecting such findings to changes in store layout and to sales promotion measures. The ability the question asks for has three stages: (1) collecting large amounts of information about business activities, (2) analyzing it, and (3) using it for business decision-making and operations, and this is exactly the area data mining covers. Therefore the most appropriate theme for the training is イ. It is also worth learning the related terms together: the foundation that organizes and stores company-wide data by purpose as the target of data mining analysis is a data warehouse, its small-scale version for a single department is a data mart, and the whole effort of using such analysis for management decision-making is called BI (business intelligence).
Incorrectウ
Process modeling is a technique that breaks the flow of work (a business process) down into components such as tasks, inputs, outputs, people in charge, and branches, and then diagrams and models it using notations such as DFD, BPMN, and business flowcharts. Its purpose is to visualize the current work (As-Is) and to design the improved form (To-Be), that is, to help with business reform and with requirements definition for systemization, and what it handles is the procedures and structure of the work. This differs, in both its target and its purpose, from the activity of collecting and analyzing large volumes of data to dig out knowledge.
Incorrectエ
Workflow is a mechanism that takes business procedures routed from person to person in a predetermined order, such as application, approval, and authorization, and moves them automatically through a system while managing their progress. Its main effects are shortening processing time by making things like internal approval documents, expense settlements, and leave applications electronic, and strengthening internal control by recording approval histories; what it deals with is the flow of routine business procedures. This does not match the intent of the question, which is to obtain knowledge useful for decision-making by analyzing data.
ここがポイント
- Definition of data mining — a technique that digs into large volumes of accumulated data with methods such as statistical analysis, clustering, association analysis, and machine learning, discovers the regularities, correlations, and trends buried in it, and uses them for decision-making. The foundation that stores the data to be analyzed is a data warehouse (the departmental version is a data mart), and the whole effort of putting these to work in management judgment is BI (business intelligence).
- Tell confusing terms apart by asking what each technique handles — groupware supports information sharing and communication between people, process modeling visualizes and designs the flow of work, and workflow makes routine procedures from application through approval electronic and manages their progress. Data mining is the only one that analyzes data to extract knowledge.
用語