Did you know that you can download and install a Microsoft Office Excel Data mining Add In? Once installed you get an extra ribbon in Excel called Analyze:

In this ribbon you will find buttons you can use to analyze your data in Excel. You can use the Data Mining algorithms to detect Key Influencers, Categories, Forecasts, Exceptions … So by exporting your data towards Excel you are able to use these Data Mining capabilities to learn from your data and get to know your business even better.

Example:

Starting from Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 you have the possibility to export data towards Microsoft Excel, with 1 mouse click. Open for example a Customer List form and click on the Export to Excel button:

Result:

You then need to format this data as a table:

As soon as you have done this, the Analyze ribbon becomes available:

Then you can start Data Mining. Let's for example do a Category Detection for our Customers:

A popup window appears asking for which columns to use to detect categories. For this example I will use the columns proposed by the wizard itself. After clicking on the Run button he starts analyzing:

At the end you get an extra page in the Excel workbook containing a report that shows the results of the Data Mining Analysis:

In this example, 5 categories of customers were detected, and by filtering the table below you can see what types of customers were detected by Excel, by analyzing your data. And in the original excel table an extra column was added showing the category:

This is how simple it is to use Data Mining technology in Microsoft Excel.

Requirements:

1. You need to have Microsoft Office Excel 2007.
2. And you need somewhere on your network (or desktop) a running instance of Sql Server Analysis Services. The data mining Add In uses this for his calculations.

Of course the Data Mining algorithms are based upon Mathematical and Statistical formulas, meaning that the more data you have, the more precise the results will be.

If you are convinced about the advantages of Data Mining and you would like to go deeper, you can also use Microsoft Sql Server Analysis Services. With Analysis Services you can also do Data Mining, but there you have many more possibilities.

Would you like to know more about the Data Mining possibilities of Excel or were to download this free add in, then go to this website:

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/dm/addins.mspx