Collaboration Is Essential for Solving Business Data Challenges

Ask Smart Questions To Understand Your Business Data Needs

Data is an all-encompassing part of every significant business today. Learn how your business can take a collaborative approach to identify and solve essential data needs.

Data integrity. Data storage. Data security. Data regulation. Data leverage.

Data is at the heart of the business today. It’s driving everything from how companies collect and store information to how they use it to advance business goals.

Consider, for example, a recent Gartner report that noted there would be 5.8 billion endpoints as part of the Internet of Things by the end of 2020 in the enterprise and automotive sectors, a one-year increase of 21 percent. The most significant segments will be in utilities (1.37 billion endpoints), physical security (1.09 billion), and government (700 million). That’s a staggering number of objects generating trillions of data points daily.

What does that mean for business in 2020? That companies need to have a clear handle on how to collect, store, govern, and protect data that they, their customers, and their products generate. With all that information comes risk and opportunity for extraordinary transformations, if companies ask the right questions and act quickly to leverage the potential.

The key is collaboration across the business landscape.

What Questions Do We Need to Ask About Data?

Business intelligence is the practice of using technologies, policies, and strategies to harness information. Better business intelligence means better decisions and better business outcomes.

Before embarking on a BI strategy, it’s critical to engage groups from across the business to ask the big questions it will take to optimize the opportunity. Among the key questions to ask are:

• Do we have the data that helps us understand and are aligned with our primary business objectives?
• Are we using data that gives us answers that lead to actionable insights?
• What are our key performance indicators, and do we have data that allow us to measure against them?
• Do we have the data that help us measure return on investment?
• What data do we have that lead us to potential new sources of revenue?
• What data do we have that lead us to efficiencies and cost-cutting measures?
• Is there data available to help us understand our customers better?

Gathering insights and a more profound understanding around the table helps your organization gain a foothold into what data are available and which still need to be collected and analyzed.

What Are Data Governance Policies?

Data governance is a vital part of your IT governance strategy. You want to build a governance structure that outlines clearly the way data is used within the organization. Among the critical components of a reliable data governance platform are:

• Identification of the critical components of your data. This includes information such as what types of data you collect, where and how it is stored, what formats are used, and how it is used. This should include structured data housed in digital media and unstructured data
• Policy and procedure development. You want to create the policies and procedures that govern how data are used, managed, stored, accessed, and protected.
• Employee education about the need for data governance, its components, and any relevant guidelines. Be sure to incorporate compliance with these guidelines in performance evaluations and job descriptions.
• Staff assignments for data governance. Remember, data security, hygiene, and maintenance are not the exclusive domain of IT. This is another area where collaboration can have a dominant role in stressing the importance and value of data governance.
• Metrics for data governance. Be sure to develop ways to evaluate and assess your data governance and use the results to determine future improvements.

Data governance is a powerful way to unify the way data is used and secured, leading to a unified understanding of its role and impact.

How Can We Optimize How Data Are Used?

With so much data coming into and generated by businesses today, it’s critical to think differently about data optimization. Internal data centers are no longer enough to store and use massive quantities of information.

Companies are increasingly using cloud and multi-cloud strategies to leverage the unique features of different vendors. Automation, edge computing, AI, and blockchain technologies applied to data help companies find new ways to harness the power contained in all those bytes.

At Fuelled Networks, we help businesses harness the power of data. From cloud migration and consulting to IT security, our solutions solve your most significant data challenges. To learn more, contact us today.