In: Operations Management
agree or not?
Hard data is a verifiable fact that is acquired from reliable sources. It implies data that is directly measurable, factual and indisputable. Some of the benefits of hard data are reliability, value add, prediction, and accuracy. Hard research is the gathering of numerical and demographic data which helps determine who the customers are and what they want, when they want it and how they want the product or service. Hard data describes the types of data that are generated from devices and applications such as phones, computers, smart meters, traffic monitoring systems and bank transactions. These things and this information can be measured, traced and validated. Hard data is for companies that only depend on analytics and they are used by technical savy companies. An example of hard data would be a medical study on the results of testing. Soft data is based on qualitative information such as a rating, survey or poll. It implies that the data has been collected from qualitative observations and quantified. Sometimes one might think that soft data is not reliable, but it really is. In many cases, the best data available is soft data such as customer satisfaction and product reviews. Some of the benefits of using soft data are, direct response, saves cost and time, genuine feed backs are possible, and data can not be manipulated and is reliable. Soft data is usually preferred for small business cases and projects while hard data's are required for huge businesses. An example of soft data would be to get the patients to rate their symptoms.
Agreed to the above statement, the reasons provided below:
1. The hard data is measurable and it is always accurate and the organization would always prefer towards such data because the source would be reliable.
2. In the soft data it is said the information which received cannot be right all the time as the data are taken from different sources through different prediction, so accuracy level would be less.
3. The qualitative, soft data is a method which uses expert judgement rather than analytics. There cannot be any accurate solutions as where the judgement varies to each individual.
4. The soft data can just predict the future but cannot guarantee towards the same but hard data could be as a proof as where the same could happen in the future because it is valid.
5. Hard data could be used by larger organization, government etc but soft data can be used with small companies and forecast the future events.