Avoid Data Silos and Promote a Single Source of Truth With Data Management, Integration, and a Cloud Data Warehouse

It’s the bane of any data analyst, business user, or executive decision-maker who needs clean and unified data: The data silo.

Data silos, also known as?information silos, are information repositories controlled by one group or department and cut off from the rest of an organization (a similar concept to silos on a farm, which contain and keep separate various materials).?

While data silos are relatively common at many large enterprises with legacy information systems, their inherent isolation inevitably causes a lot of?problems, including:

• Incomplete and inaccessible data: Because each group’s data is separate and inaccessible to other groups, no one in the organization has the full picture from all available data – which can lead to mistaken assumptions and uninformed business decisions.
• Inconsistent data: Siloed data is almost always inconsistently formatted and of poor quality, because each dataset is tended separately by different groups with different formatting standards and rules.
• Inefficient use of data resources: Data silos inevitably lead to added IT costs because each group or department has its own unique datasets and processes, and typically requires its own on-premises or cloud storage and other investments (often managed separately, adding even more redundant costs).
• Compliance and security issues: Inconsistent, incomplete, and inaccessible data is a data security and compliance nightmare. When you can’t find the right data, can’t access it, or don’t understand what it means, it’s basically impossible to meet compliance and data privacy regulations.
• A lack of collaboration and unity: Siloed organizations risk becoming fragmented and dysfunctional as departments jealously guard “their” data, as opposed to embracing a collaborative effort across the entire enterprise.?

Despite their ongoing negative impact, data silos are relatively common at large enterprises with several business units, departments, or regional offices. Organizations with decentralized technology procurement or management structures, companies that have gone through acquisitions or fast business growth, and organizations with a corporate culture that discourages openness and common goals regarding data are also prone to developing data silos.?

Indeed, most organizations will eventually become siloed to some extent unless there’s a concerted effort in the opposite direction. This is especially true as?data volumes?and velocities climb ever-higher and legacy systems are confronted with new data types they weren’t designed to handle.

And that’s why a strategy including a cloud data warehouse paired with data integration and data governance tools is so important.

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