In this special guest feature, Christian Lutz, Co-founder and President, Crate.io, believes that if you are thorough in considering your data generation and access needs, you will be in a better position to choose the right database that produces the right quality of data and the efficient access to insights that help drive your business forward towards growth. Christian is a seasoned entrepreneur with 20+ years experience in enterprise software.
With more and more business data being generated, there is an increasing need to take better care of it.
Questions that need to be answered are: Is the right data being collected and collected at the right place, how is missing data addressed, and how are data gaps closed? These are some of the questions around data quality that are critical to have answers to.
Quality and access
Without the right level of data quality, using data might lead to the wrong business conclusions being generated by business leaders and their teams, and even algorithms.
Ensuring that the right data is easily accessible to the right users is essential, making sure it is presented in a fast and user-friendly way to enable them to interact with it and to fully analyze it.
Therefore, data quality as well as simple and full data access will need to be a key part of all ongoing or upcoming data and digitization projects.
Problems faced
To illustrate the problems that organizations are facing, low-code data app provider Domo conducted research among 450 CIOs, chief data officers and vice presidents in data-oriented positions.
It revealed a significant “data decision gap”, impacting companies’ business intelligence efforts. Organizations around the world are investing in data at a higher rate than ever, but 55% of respondents in the Domo research said the process for making decisions had “not changed at all” in their organizations.
They said decisions were largely being made “from the gut”, rather than from the data.
Culture and attitude
Organizations in the research said the top cultural or attitudinal challenge for using data effectively is that too few people across most companies understand how to access useful data or use it to drive meaningful decisions.
Failing to use data properly may begin in the C-suite, but it cascades down across every level of the business.
Domo’s study points out that the two most common explanations for this gap were business intelligence tools being disconnected from business processes, and a lack of training.
Even as organizations have embraced the power of data, most respondents saw them continuing to struggle with implementation because of their data tools. One-in-three (33%) also worried that the data decision gap would create significant data bottlenecks in the future.
Data democracy
But firms that adopt the right tools for democratizing their data are realizing the benefits of data-driven decision making.
It’s great to have all this data, but if you can’t enable your employees to use the data easily to drive improved decisions, then it doesn’t matter how much you invest in the effort.
Simplifying access to data through apps and integrations can help companies capitalize quickly on the investments they have made in digital transformation over recent years.
An integrated database
Key to linking data processes together is a good working database to support the many different applications and users in the business, supporting them with efficient data access and quality stored data.
When choosing a database, it is key that it is flexible regarding data capacity and that it can quickly scale in response to the needs of the business. Making the right choice will help you avoid unnecessary costs and potential technical and integration problems when there are changes to your operational data needs in the future.
A critical part of the selection process is to consider the database analysis modules that your organization requires, to get the best insights for your business operations and development.
Usability
Companies want to use their data to its fullest potential, whether that’s for developing and delivering new customer offerings as quickly as possible or optimizing their business operations.
The business productivity an organization can get out of a database will be dictated by its usability. Wider access to database content is common, including the likes of sales, marketing, business or product development and HR staff, for instance. The DBA (database administrator) is no longer usually the only person that needs to access a database, so straightforward usability is essential.
Input and extraction
There should also be a straightforward way to put information into the database through its tight integration with other business applications, and an easy and speedy way to extract relevant information out of the platform using a variety of different formats.
Ideally, organizations should be able to use a single database to house all their different types of data, so they can efficiently extract the full value from it and dramatically simplify their data stack and data handling. From a single platform, they should be able to generate faster and more accurate business data insights, whether a single user or thousands of them are demanding that information at the same time.
If you are thorough in considering your data generation and access needs, you will be in a better position to choose the right database that produces the right quality of data and the efficient access to insights that help drive your business forward towards growth.
Sign up for the free insideBIGDATA newsletter.
Join us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InsideBigData1
Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/insidebigdata/
Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insideBIGDATANOW
Speak Your Mind