Structured data

Structured data is information kept in a fixed shape, with the same columns for every row, like a spreadsheet of orders with a date, a customer, a product, and a price. Because every row looks the same, a computer can sort it, filter it, and add it up in seconds. Most small businesses already have plenty of it in their sales system, their bookings, and their accounts. We work with a community food relief charity whose numbers lived in three different volunteer spreadsheets. An AI helper (the industry calls it an agent) now reads all three, adds up the totals, and puts them into the funder's report. The coordinator still checks every number, because a typo in one sheet becomes a wrong total in the report.