Supply chain data is not singular in source, in that it is composed of a variety of informational data points and collections such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, manufacturing data, cost of goods sold, various vendor records, and so on.

This data is compiled using numerous methods and means, but in this book, we are focusing on analyzing data with Watson Analytics (not  concocting or collecting  the data), so we will assume that we have been provided with a file of supply chain data for analysis and proceed from there.

In the previous chapter's example project, we had a field-by-field description of the data we were going to use. In this chapter and this project, to start with we have only a provided file of supply chain data, and we have not been offered any further details as to what specifically is in the data file. What to do?

Although we could use an external tool to start examining the data, we know that Watson Analytics offers a really good exploration feature, so we will just go ahead and perform the steps to load our data.