3 Ways to Avoid “Fool’s Gold” in the Rush to Better Data
If data is the new gold, technologies that promise to deliver value are like a prospector’s tools. Used correctly, the tools can unlock insights and drive data decision-making. But attempting to undergo data transformation without the right tools or know-how can lead to unusable data – fool’s gold.
Most modern data analytics platforms are built with scalable components that comprehensively meet the needs of data management in an organization. Components of a modern data analytics platform include:
- Data integration – tools that move data from siloed source systems into a central repository;
- Data lake and data warehouse – secure storage with versioned, accessible, analytics-ready data;
- Visual analytics – tools that provide dashboards for access to reporting throughout an organization; and
- Advance Analytics modeling – tools that use data to perform AI and ML modeling, unlocking insights with historical and real-time data to empower better data decision-making.
- A collaborative Data Catalogue provides easy search of data assets and a well-defined business glossary
- Solid predictable operational model puts all these pieces at work together while giving visibility to all stakeholders.
Just because an organization has all those components in place doesn’t mean it can start to mine data for insights. In order to avoid fool’s gold, data leaders should have a use in mind as a way to measure success of new initiatives, should be ready to apply data governance to the entire data life cycle, and should prioritize data stewardship in their organization.
Have a Use Case in Mind
Before investing in data technology, have a use case in mind. Digital transformation is only possible if all stakeholders get on board, and the most powerful way to accomplish technology adoption is with verifiable results.
A use case should be specific to the organizational goals – a company that specializes in delivery of autoparts might want to create a data architecture to assess and optimize delivery times; a regional bank might want to use 3rd party data to expand its footprint in home refinancing and HELOCs; a medical company might want a flexible framework to accelerate ingestion and processing of claims and medical patient files; an ecommerce company can use advanced analytical modeling to predict customer behavior and churn. The right use case provides organizations the opportunity to become experts with their tech stack and scale accordingly.
A clear use case defines the technology required and identifies liabilities in your current system architecture. The starting point of any use case should audit existing data – without trustworthy, accessible internal data, initiatives with new technology or datasets could die on the vine.
Apply Data Governance to the Entire Data Life Cycle
Data governance is critical for trusted and accessible data. Passerelle partners with Talend to deliver superior data integrity and cataloguing during data’s life cycle. Talend offers the ability to index and track versioned data sets and provides point and click tools for deduping and cleansing data and a complete Data Catalogue to collaborate, track lineage and understand changes impact across the eco-system.
For continued governance, Snowflake Data Cloud is unparalleled for storing data and making it available in an elastic, secure environment to store data and enable data quality campaigns. A mature Data Cloud environment supports at-scale data use throughout an organization – at any one time, business line users can access a visual depiction of data quality, operational users can deliver personalized services and offers to customers, and data scientists can spend their time on high value projects with internal and external datasets.
Without a focus on data governance, organizations can be stymied if their Data Cloud becomes a Data Swamp – data ingested without a verifiable, replicable structure can lead to duplicated data, uncategorized data, uncontrolled data – UNUSABLE data. Data Rocket provides a turn-key data governance solution that supports clean, analytics-ready data.
Key Components to Data Governance in Data Rocket
- Meta Data and Data Versioning
The Data Rocket Governed Dynamic Ingestion Framework provides predictable, highly visible ingestion using the Talend Data Management Platform, with managed CDC, preliminary data cleansing and creation of data history for each change in source data.
- Data Mastering
Data Mastering streamlines mission critical data by creating a Golden Record throughout the organization, with an accelerator built on Talend Data Quality and Stewardship.
- Audit and Control
Data Rocket Audit & Control Framework captures and records job execution stats that provide a clear picture of data growth and job execution performance – saving time to troubleshoot should problems arise.
- Secure and governed access
Permissions-based security provides the right data to the right audience at scale – in a secure and operational way.
Prioritize Data Stewardship
To make the most of your data ecosystem, data should be a team sport, accessible to data scientists, business users, project managers and executive decision-makers, alongside customer service providers in the organization. For this to be possible, data should be managed as a resource at least as valuable as other company assets by a data steward.
Data stewards are responsible for data domain within an organization. Data stewards should define and monitor the process and controls that ensure quality. As an organization grows or adds more data sources, data stewards maintain the integrity of the data cloud, applying consistent rules and oversight. In short, data stewardship is not a set and forget proposition – it should be prioritized with other essential functions of an organization.
Data stewardship guides better customer service and marketing capabilities, with operational business intelligence that provides the right products and services to existing and potential customers at the right time.
Data is gold – but unlike the finite resource that drove prospecting of the past, data is constantly growing and evolving. Every organization is sitting on its own treasure trove, and with the right tools, the gold ore in your organization can add brilliance to your decision-making and value to your bottom line. Passerelle helps organizations identify use cases, strengths and opportunities in their data – contact us today to schedule a consultation.
