Here’s How to Make Data Initiatives More Accessible to Business Users for Greater Impact 

There is no doubt that data is the foundation of most effective organizational decision-making today. By data, I mean the numerous data-centric initiatives like analytics, personalization, machine learning, etc., that enterprises can leverage to deliver better experiences for all stakeholders. However, enterprises often fail to take data-driven decision-making beyond the ivory towers of the C-suite. 

Because of the involvement of powerful software platforms to harness and manage data streams, such initiatives often stay within the ambit of technology experts who implement and control the platforms on behalf of the leadership.  

Additionally, most organizations have siloed digital structures within their technology landscape as different departments follow their own practices of leveraging data insights to form decisions. 

To succeed in today's highly competitive markets, it is important to ensure easy access to data initiatives for all employees. When everyone follows a data-driven roadmap for their work routine, it becomes easier to drive a unified and consistent experience across the business. 

How Can Enterprises Make Data Initiatives More Accessible to Business Users  

Foster a Data-Driven Culture 

It is important for all team members to realize that the data being generated or used in their departments or business function may find several uses in other areas of the business.  

Through awareness programs and training, all team members must be made aware of the need to work together to build a data-driven culture in the organization. This will help in implementing data generation, transmission, and processing initiatives over time without adversely affecting employee productivity as the organizational framework will be ready to accommodate a new data-driven process or workflow. 

Set Data Standards 

The next step to making data initiatives more accessible is to set a standard for the use of data across departments or work units. This will involve setting up seamless information exchange standards, privacy and security policies, compliance frameworks, etc. All teams should be made aware of how they should collect, use, and store data within their information systems.  

Following a standard practice will eliminate expensive ETL transformation exercises and improve the quality of results. 

Ease of Use 

So once an enterprise has fostered a data culture and established standards for managing data initiatives, the next step is to empower staff to make use of the data. Today, this is established through high-end software for several data-centric use cases, for example, analytics. However, as mentioned earlier in the blog, most non-technical business users may find these tools or platforms to be very complex.  

Instead, enterprises must invest in tools or platforms that are simple to use, even for non-technical business users. For example, they could use  low-code platforms to help drive data initiatives for different business units.  

Establish Accountability 

The importance of adhering to a data culture within the organization is already covered above. As an added imperative, it is equally essential to establish a direct line of accountability for different stakeholders with regard to making their data landscape accessible and available to other personnel on demand.  

This includes ensuring the data is managed in the appropriate format, has the necessary attributes for global sharing, and ensures that data integrity isn't compromised due to delays or errors. Manually achieving a high level of transparency and accountability is impractical for large data initiatives that span multiple departments.  

Thus, enterprises must focus on automating their data landscape to provide unbiased, accurate, and fast access to transactional and operational data at any time. Automation also encourages better compliance with data standards that need to be followed during data exchange. 

Summing Up 

Be it understanding customers or your business's performance, the greater the availability of data to support decisions, the better would be the outcomes. As companies rush to invest in the latest data platforms and digital experiences, it must be ensured that there is a strategically planned roadmap or practice internally that channels data to all relevant units in real-time as needed.  

Building such an accessible, resilient, and agile data framework for your business requires a deep understanding of modern data nuances and management etiquette. This is where a knowledgeable partner like Novigo can be your biggest asset. Get in touch with us to help build a more reliable data experience for your business.