The technology types have been very successful at automating transactions and gathering loads of transactional data. We spend the bulk of our time running, revising, monitoring and, in general, supporting transactional systems and the data they generate.

With all of this data available, it makes sense that someone wants us to make the data more usable. But what constitutes usable? Data is useful if it can be turned into knowledge, and that knowledge is useful if we can use it to make better decisions. Knowledge that does not improve decision making is trivia.