Data Democratization - What about it?

Data democratization is a concept that has been gaining thrust in recent years as more and more organizations recognize the value of their data assets. Access to business data has always been limited to a small group of experts or senior managers.

With the growing understanding of the potential of data, organizations are now adopting a strategy of data democratization, which makes data available and accessible to every stakeholder.

When every stakeholder can access the data they require, it improves decision-making, increases efficiency, and boosts operational excellence.

To achieve effective data democratization, organizations need to put in place proper data governance, establishing clear policies and procedures for data access and use, providing training and support to help people understand how to interpret and use data effectively.

An alternative approach is to treat data as a product, managing and governing data in a way that ensures trustworthiness while meeting the business needs of the organization.

Taking a data-as-a-product approach everything will start with operational use cases. Business users own the process and determine the most relevant use cases they want to improve, which are often linked to business priorities and outcomes.

This approach requires a strong sense of data ownership to ensure proper data governance, that needs to be cross-organizational, with every stakeholder responsible for ensuring adequate data usage, with each business user knowing more about the data they are using, know where it is stored, where it comes from, when data should be deprecated or deleted and whether it can be trusted. They need to know every component of the data to maximize its business use and support their organizations objectives and strategy.

Democratization of business data also means that it must be readily accessible by those who require it and protected from those who do not.

Traditionally, there is a gap between the business and IT and organizations are used to require users to come to IT with requests and wait until they are fulfilled and authorized, making it impossible for trusted data to be available to all when it’s needed.

Data democratization can deliver significant benefits for any organization prepared to take the steps to make it a reality. Users will be able to make more informed decisions and improve the quality of service provided to clients and other stakeholders.

It is essential for organizations to consider how following this strategy could assist in unlocking the value of their data assets gaining competitive advantage and becoming more agile and responsive to changes in the marketplace.