Datamyne, Part 3: Micro to Macro and Back in 60 Seconds or Less

One of the coolest things about Datamyne’s data mining interface is the drag and drop feature for adding or subtracting fields of data to the display and export processes.  Similar to creating and viewing Pivot tables in Excel, the UI provides users the ability to dimensionalize their perspective of the data and flip it one way then another.  Again, perfect for analysts who require more complex manipulation of the data.

My personal preference when working with or presenting trade data is first of all to get a big picture view, then logically drill down to finer detail and greater specificity.  This ability is absent in most TI products on the market.  Datamyne’s interface provides that functionality superbly.  It allows you to get both the macro view and the micro view as well.

One of the biggest difficulties I labored with in developing trade intelligence platforms is the tension between making data easy to access and to understand on the one side and providing the detail and specificity on the other.  Although Datamyne’s data mining utility is well crafted, it is still rather complex and fairly intimidating at first glance.  It’s about as easy as something complex can be.  Heck, all the buttons and control options on most video games confuse me.

Another important feature is that once users create and perfect their queries, they can save and retrieve them for future use.  In addition, they can set-up alerts that will automatically email them when certain criteria are triggered, such as when new shipments occur or new suppliers or competitors for their designated product enter the scene.

Not surprisingly, Datamyne’s customers are larger companies with complex supply chains who need to perform custom analyses.  To accommodate this market niche, Datamyne provides more extensive customer support and training.  They are the full service solution in comparison with many of the self-service e-commerce type conveyers of U.S. Customs data that have recently proliferated the marketplace.

Other competitive strengths that were mentioned to me include:

• The best overall value with prices starting as low as $199 per month for access to the raw unfiltered, non standardized U.S. Customs manifest data.
• Latin American Coverage:  Datamyne has its roots, data center and most employees south of the border (Uruguay). They offer transactional data for many South American and Central American countries.
• Statistical data gathered and disseminated for almost 50 countries, updated monthly.
• Versatile and (relatively) easy to use user interface.

All in all, it represents a very good data mining utility for trade analysts to employ to slice and dice and serve up U.S. Customs data.

Datamyne Data Mining Utility provides capacity to quickly get the big picture as well as drill down on a specific Bill of Lading

Datamyne’s way too cool Drag and Drop feature that allows trade analysts to create pivot table like views of the data