Core concepts
Proactive Intelligence glossary
The terms NexDiscovery uses, defined once.
Guide4 min readLast updated
Short answer
This glossary defines the terms used across NexDiscovery guides, in alphabetical order.
Key takeaways
- One definition per term, used the same way everywhere.
- The three core terms are Proactive Intelligence, Data Intelligence, and company context.
- Most other terms describe a step or an output, such as the Action Pack.
- 30-Day Discovery Sprint
- The starting point with NexDiscovery: a four-week engagement on the systems you choose, ending in 2 to 3 source-backed Action Packs.
- Action Pack
- NexDiscovery's deliverable: one source-backed finding with its underlying records, an estimated dollar impact, a recommended action, and a suggested owner. It is not a dashboard or a report.
- Business direction
- The goal that guides an investigation, such as grow sales, reduce cost, improve operations, or prepare data for AI.
- Company context
- How your organization defines customers, products, cost, risk, and success, plus how your systems store and relate that information.
- Confidence level
- How strong the signal is, and why. Stated with each finding.
- Correlate
- The second step. NexDiscovery matches the same entity across your authorized sources and searches the approved data for cross-system signals.
- Cross-system signal
- A business finding that appears only when two or more disconnected data sources are analyzed together.
- Data gap
- A place where the data is incomplete or inconsistent, which limits what can be concluded. Shown with the finding.
- Data Intelligence
- How NexDiscovery learns what your approved data means and how your systems relate. It connects read-only, matches the same entity across sources, and notes data gaps.
- Discovery engine
- The part of NexDiscovery that searches the approved data across your systems on its own, inside your environment.
- Entity resolution
- Matching the same real-world customer, account, or organization across sources using shared keys, account identifiers, customer numbers, domains, and tax or registration IDs, with fuzzy matching where keys are inconsistent.
- Evidence
- The specific source records, correlated across systems, that support a finding.
- Map
- The first step. NexDiscovery connects read-only to the systems you choose and learns what your approved data means.
- Private deployment
- Running NexDiscovery inside your own environment, in a VPC or on-premises, so your data stays there.
- Proactive Intelligence
- Discovers what matters in your enterprise data before you know to ask. It maps systems, correlates signals across them, validates each finding, and recommends a next step with evidence.
- Recommend
- The fourth step. You receive each finding as an Action Pack. You decide and act.
- Validate
- The third step. Every finding is validated against the underlying records within the approved scope and scored for confidence. Findings that cannot be verified are dropped.
See also the full NexDiscovery Glossary.
Frequently asked questions
What are the core terms to know?
Proactive Intelligence, Data Intelligence, and company context. The rest describe steps and outputs.
Where is each term explained in depth?
The Core concepts and How it works guides cover each one.
Are these terms specific to NexDiscovery?
Proactive Intelligence and Data Intelligence are used here with the definitions above. Other vendors may use similar words differently, so check definitions when comparing platforms.
Related guides
Core concepts5 min
What is Proactive Intelligence?
Proactive Intelligence discovers what matters in your enterprise data before you know to ask.
Read guideCore concepts5 min
What is Data Intelligence?
Data Intelligence is how NexDiscovery learns what your approved data means and how your systems relate to each other.
Read guideCore concepts4 min
What is company context?
Company context is how your organization defines customers, products, cost, risk, and success, plus how your systems store and relate that information.
Read guide