From hedge fund managers to mutual funds and even private equity managers, alternative data has the power to improve valuation of securities and boost the clarity of the investment process.  Techniques like natural language processing and machine learning allow organizations to better capitalize on alternative data. These technologies enable processing of large, heterogenous, and unstructured sets at an extremely fast rate. A new report from SparkCognition explores the challenges for alternative data adoption, how to overcome them, and explores the potential of automation.