In today’s fast-moving and highly competitive enterprise environment, data governance is integral to keeping your business afloat. As more and more businesses have shifted to the digital world, the influx of customer data has increased significantly as well. Although the accumulation of customer data is critical, utilising that data to derive meaningful business insights is just as, if not more important.
Data governance is the process of managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data in enterprise systems. Effective data governance ensures that data is consistent and trustworthy and doesn't get misused. It's increasingly critical as organisations face new data privacy regulations and rely more and more on data analytics to help optimise operations and drive business decision-making.
One highly important aspect of data governance is managing the availability and usability of enterprise data. This process is known as data democratisation - the enablment of all business users to have access to the organisation's data and therefore derive meaningful insights to drive decision making. The ultimate goal of data democratisation is to have anybody use data at any time to make decisions with no barriers to access or understanding. Therefore, in this blog, we will take a look at what the process is, discuss its importance to the future of your business, and list some ways your business can achieve it.
But why, you may ask, is it important that all business users have equal access to the organisation’s data? In simple terms, providing equal access to enterprise data leads to more efficient decision making. Having the ability to instantly access and understand data, irrespective of position within the organisation, will translate into more agile teams. Thus, those teams will have a competitive advantage over other organisations who are more reluctant to provide equal data access to their business users.
Besides its practical advantages, data democratisation also fosters team members that are more data-driven. When data access is granted to any tier of your company, it empowers individuals at all levels of ownership and responsibility to use the data in their decision making. When any particular business-related event occurs, and the right people are proactively informed, those people can dig into and understand those anomalies, and ultimately respond to them in a short amount of time.
How your business can approach data democratisation
Data democratisation is not an extremely difficult process; businesses that do seek its benefits, however, must be willing to create it intentionally, which often entails revamping the current budget, software, and training your business utilises.
The first step towards doing so is breaking down information silos. In other words, eliminating barriers to data access and connecting previously isolated sets of data to one another. This requires the use of customisable analytics tools, which ideally will filter the data and visualisations shared with each individual. In reality, not every employee will be granted the same exact access to company data, only the data necessary to fulfill their roles. For instance, whereas a marketing manager may want to examine the effects on customer retention due to an email campaign, a financial specialist might want to take a look at the ROI of that campaign to determine potential profitability.
But 'access' is just one part of data democratisation. The next step in the process is to ensure that each company member is fully capable of using their newly-acquired data. Since data democratisation functions on the basis of self-service analytics, every team member must be trained up to a minimum level of comfort with the tools, concepts, and processes involved in order to participate.
One concern you as the owner or manager of a business may have is the privacy issues that could occur as a result of the breakdown of information silos. After all, the mismanagement, misinterpretation, misuse, or unintended dissemination of data could prove detrimental to your business. As such, a group of employees with specialised skills — known as a center of excellence —should be assembled to keep the use of data throughout the company on the correct path. By providing professional guidance and leadership skills to each tier of your company, having a center of excellence is a great way to dispel your privacy concerns.
To conlcude, data democratisation is just one aspect of achieving true data governance, but it is a game changer for any organisation that implements it well. Done correctly, it enables all teams to put data at the forefront of business operations in a seamless manner, thereby helping to keep your company afloat in the increasingly competitive enterprise environment.
About the author: Mark Roychowdhury is a Copywriter Intern at ei² niche consulting for #data #insights #performance www.eisquare.co.uk
Editor: Aleksandra Pavlovic