During the last years, general progress in information processing led
to an enormous increase of the data amounts which are produced in the
companies' functional units, Unfortunately, only limited capacities to
analyse this flood of data are available. hs a consequence, there is
the danger to overlook important management information. Therefore, it
is promising to apply data mining methods which automate data analysi
s processes to economic issues, This paper presents the idea of data m
ining, sketches the difficulties which must be overcome, and describes
the stare of the art by giving examples of systems, methods, and appl
ications.