Data preparation is the process of cleaning and transforming raw data prior to processing and analysis. It is an important step prior to processing and often involves reformatting data, making corrections to data and the combining of data sets to enrich data.

Properly cleaning and wrangling data will often be the most time-consuming portion of the workload, but it is essential to error-free analysis and richer data insights. The outcomes of data exploration can be a powerful factor in understanding the structure of data, values distributions, and interrelationships. It is a necessary first step in an analytics project in order to filter unstructured, inconsistent and disorderly data, connect multiple real-time data sources and for quick reporting of data.