Six years have passed since The Economist wrote “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.” Clive Humby coined the phrase “data is the new oil” more than a decade before that. And it’s clear that data is businesses’ most important asset, other than people.
Yet the reality is that due to its rapid growth and accumulation, most organizations today are still struggling to effectively manage and monetize their data.
Data-driven companies do exist, of course. Companies like Tesla and LinkedIn used data to break out from the crowd and continue to use it to create value for themselves and their customers.
Tesla didn’t disrupt the automotive sector and far exceed the valuations of Ford and GM by selling more cars. What Tesla did differently was collect data from its autos on the road, analyze that data, and use the data analysis to detect issues and continually make improvements.
Every organization, and each function within it, can use data to grow and improve. Finance can use data to understand key performance indicators. HR can employ data to enhance career development, recruiting and retention. Marketing can be more effective with customer acquisition, loyalty and retention insights. Sales can use personalization to reach quotas faster.
But new Hitachi Vantara data, based on a study with nearly 1,300 C-suite executives and IT department heads from major industries in a dozen markets across the globe, indicates:
- 61% are already overwhelmed by the amount of data that they manage;
- 75% are concerned that their current data infrastructure won’t be able to scale to meet their organization’s data needs over the next two years.
So, how can your organization get a handle on data and use this asset to drive value?
Let’s take a look.
Make Sure Your Strategy Addresses All Kinds of Data
The world and organizations within it have a wealth of data, and new data pours in every day. IDC says global data will grow to 175 zettabytes by 2025, up from 33 zettabytes in 2018. NPR recently reported there’s so much data that we needed to create new measures to keep up.
But, the data challenge goes far beyond just volume. Data fragmentation is a massive problem.
Organizations want and need to use various data types, and data lives everywhere.
Traditionally, when organizations dealt primarily with SQL transactions, they had structured data that fit neatly into the rows and columns of relational databases.
That’s not the case anymore.
Now most data – an estimated 80-90% – is unstructured. That includes audio, social media, video and other data in its native format. Organizations also have semi-structured data, which doesn’t fit into table formats. Your data strategy must span all these data types.
Build a Common Fabric Across All Your Data Sources
Most organizations still operate on a piecemeal basis. They use one cloud for one thing and another cloud for something else. But they lack a single view across all their data sources.
People used to think the best approach was bringing an organization’s data into one massive database. That idea has fallen out of fashion. Data is everywhere – on premises, in your cloud and service provider Clouds, at the Edge and elsewhere. And, more non-IT folks in lines of business are now managing and owning data. You need to meet your data where it lives.
Create a strong foundation for monetizing your data by adopting an agile data platform. Implement a control plane so that you can manage infrastructure no matter where it is deployed. Build a common data fabric to enable applications to consume the data infrastructure they need. Then create a data catalog and bring in analytics. This will give you the visibility and control to manage workloads across your entire hybrid environment.
Bake in Security Right From the Start
A common data fabric will also enable your organization to create and apply security best practices and consistent security policies across all aspects of your data at all locations. This includes making sure that appropriate data protection and cyber resiliency are baked into your data management strategy from the beginning.
Keep in mind that security is not just about building a wall or perimeter around your data; you need to make sure your business is prepared for various “what-if” security scenarios.
It’s also important to remember that not everybody will need access to every bit of data. Build identity access profiles for each of your data user groups so only authorized parties can access specific data.
Involve Data End Users as You Architect Your Solution
In architecting your data platform, start by considering who needs access to your data.
Business intelligence (BI) analysts used to be the primary users of enterprise data. They would feed data into pre-configured reports and issue those reports maybe once a month. Because BI analysts pre-configured their reports, if someone wanted to look at a particular attribute, it would take the analysts weeks to make that adjustment, run the report and deliver the insight.
But now data scientists want to experiment with data. They don’t want to wait around for data analysts to deliver monthly reports. Executives and lines of business professionals demand data, too. And what an exec or someone in the finance department wants will probably be different than what data scientists or people in IT, marketing, operations or sales would want and need.
In the past, IT teams vetted and licensed technology. But, in today’s day and age, lines of business folks are key influencers in technology decision making. In many cases, they drive such decisions. And different data users have unique requirements.
For example, marketing professionals need to comply with regulations such as GDPR. Engaging with data users in marketing and other departments and disciplines can help you get clarity on and implement the governance those users need. So, include such end users early in the architecting process.
Realize Your Own Data ‘Eureka’ Moment
The most innovative, high-performing organizations use data insights to drive their businesses.
But because the vast majority of businesses are already overwhelmed with data-related challenges and don’t think they have the proper mechanisms in place for the future, they are suffering and missing out on valuable opportunities to grow and improve their organizations.
You may not be there yet.
But, it’s not too late to get your data act together to empower your people to easily and securely access data without compromise to truly monetize!
