Data Within Organisations – A Valued Core Product

As an organisation grows in size and complexity, generally their data holdings grow at an even more rapid rate. A data-driven organisation will quickly realise and make use of this data to inform and improve research, decision-making, and performance. Unfortunately, technological requirements to support these holdings and their consumption can become overwhelming. Not to mention effort required to maintain a good oversight on the use of data and its productisation.

This can result in a number of negative impacts:

* Businesses potentially waste money creating new data products that provide similar value to others that already exist.

* Existing products are difficult to find and therefore cannot be utilised by others as a foundational asset to inform their product development.

* Organisations struggle to determine the business value of their data assets and financial cost for not being able to leverage it.

* Technology strategies are hard to define due to poor understanding around data consumption.

* It becomes more complex when data is shared with or consumed by external entities.

So, what can we do to improve the understanding of how our organisation is using data? Here are a few key ideas that should be considered:

1. Assigning accountability and responsibly of data to specific areas within the organisation. These groups work together and are responsible for maintaining relevant Data Governance Strategies that ensures data is made available, secure, shared and measured (data telemetry) in a consistent manner.

2. Build and maintain an automated enterprise data catalogue capability that allows users to:

a) gain quick insight on the data holdings within the organisation; and

b) contribute to how data holdings are described for all potential consumers (crowd-sourced approach).

3. Define processes and policies around creating, publishing and distributing data products, as well as implementing the technology required to support its consumption.

It is important to note that the longer an organisation continues producing and consuming data, the more this problem can get out of hand. It is essential organisations consider these strategies as part of their organic growth.

Does your organisation consider data to be a core product that it creates, and has inherent value? How does your organisation manage data? What key concepts do you wish were considered before it got too late?

#data #analytics #tsa

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