The data playground where anything is possible...

If the past few months have taught us anything, it’s that people need access to information – all the time and from anywhere. When information is bound by space (such as an office location) and time (such as 9am to 5pm), our ability to progress is also restricted to those parameters.

When we open the gates and make information securely available 24/7 from anywhere, we empower people to progress all the time. This is particularly important during times of crisis, when communication and data play an essential role in helping us make important decisions quickly.

Most people think of information only in terms of the files, folders and systems they need to do their work. And while this is fundamental, the ability to access data that shows how the business is tracking could be considered equally essential.

Especially when nothing is operating “as usual”, data lets us keep our fingers on the pulse of what’s going on inside the organisation.

But is there much value in that data when you need rapid oversight across all systems yet can only see data that relates to one platform at a time?

Fortunately, there have been forward leaps in enterprise data management in recent years – essentially solving this problem and many others that stem from it. 

Now, leaders can access comprehensive suites of data that:

·      traverse every platform

·      provide a full view of how the business is tracking

·      are accessible in real time, from anywhere

Think of it like a search engine for datasets, where data can be plumbed from thousands of disparate sources and then any non-technical person can go to town and experiment with a huge array of datasets to find extraordinary insights.

Plug in data across all business areas…and play

Until recently, the concept of a data playground (or sandbox) was considered completely impractical. Before anyone could gain a single insight from data it had to be cleaned and wrangled by time-poor IT staff or data scientists.

Complaints of having to wait weeks for reports that ultimately become irrelevant by the time they’re received only puts more pressure on tech teams – with some studies showing data engineers waste up to 80% of their day on data cleansing alone.

However, advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning now mean self-service data reporting is no longer a pipe dream for executives or their IT specialists.

At Informatica for example, we can plumb data from any number of sources and apply Enterprise Data Preparation (EDP) to produce an AI-powered data catalog. Informatica’s Artificial Intelligence engine, CLAIRE?, speeds data preparation: automatically cleansing and validating data quality as well as handling errors.

Leaders are empowered to “hunt” for their own datasets – regardless of whether the data originates from on premise or Cloud systems – to surface in whichever analytics interface the business uses (Power BI, Tableau, etc.),

For the non-technical user, this means rapid access to crystal clear insights to answer business critical questions such as:

·      Where are our biggest bottlenecks?

·      Are we hitting our KPIs?

·      Where are we losing customers?

·      What are the demographics of our biggest spenders?

We all know how much fun we have in a playground. It helps us develop our skills, sharpen our instincts, and gets us collaborating with our peers. This is essentially what new capabilities in EDP allow.

Marketing, sales, HR and other relevant divisions can have a field day – roaming free and uncovering gold nugget insights, but in a safe and risk-free environment.

Ultimately, this equips people at all levels of your business to make data-driven decisions, while freeing up your valuable data team to focus on the next innovations of digital transformation as they become available.

Every month we show how this applies in real life with our data preparation workshop . If you’re interested, you’re more than welcome to sign up or PM me.