What does it mean to have a data strategy?

Although Data First as a strategy has been around for a while now, very few companies have actually been able to come up with a data strategy that optimizes and makes available the data that is generated by the company.?Organizations have not been able to realize the potential of a data strategy, or the promises made by consultants and internal data teams.??As a result, this has remained a largely unfulfilled promise, with a lot of investment in infrastructure and people resources, and not much to show in terms of benefits.

For data strategy to work, it must be intrinsically linked to business objectives. Therefore, how data is processed and used, is inextricably linked to what data the business generates, the type of information requirements that drive the business, and what it expects to accomplish by analyzing that data.?For example, some businesses, such as insurance and health, operate in highly regulated environments.?The need for compliance to regulatory frameworks and standards is very high, and a lot of time is spent on making the information available relating to such requirements. There are other businesses where the market environment is highly competitive, and the information requirements are driven essentially to obtain a competitive advantage and analyze customer preferences.?Here, the data strategy is essentially market driven.

Data architecture and information architecture underpin data strategy. ?A company's data architecture describes how data is collected, stored, transformed, distributed, and consumed.?This includes the rules that govern how data is structured and formatted, the databases and file systems, the frequency of data collection, and the systems that connect data with the business processes that consume it. Information Architecture on the other hand, deals with the rules that convert data into useful information.?This is where the data that comes in, is integrated and analyzed to reveal relationships among various business parameters that are being measured or managed.

A good data strategy is all about organizing, governing, analyzing, and deploying an organization's information assets.?The implementation of this strategy must have the following important qualities:

·???????It must take into cognizance the nature of the business

·???????It needs to tie into the business objectives of the business

·???????It needs to be dynamic enough to adapt to the changing nature of the business

When a business operates in a highly competitive environment, the focus of the data strategy is on making available information that will allow the business to discover further avenues for increasing revenue and generating profits.?Organizing customer and product data in order to enable better information to become key.?This may even result in duplicating data or making available multiple sources of the core data, in order to ensure that key information is available.?

When the business operates in a highly regulated environment, the focus shifts to ensuring the accuracy of the core data, and a single source of truth.?This can often be time-consuming, and seemingly less productive.?However, the cost of becoming non-compliant to regulatory requirements can often result in having to pay a higher price.?It is therefore prudent to err on the side of caution and make sure that the underlying data is robust and secure.

Of course, every business will have its own set of business objectives, and the real requirements may vary depending on the circumstances.?The dynamic nature of the business will also contribute to changing needs for the data strategy.?For example, a highly mature business in a regulatory environment may have established good processes and may choose to focus on driving its growth strategy through good use of the data it generates.?It, therefore, stands to reason that the data strategy needs to strike a balance between disparate pulls and pressures for use of the data.?

Solsten prides itself on working with the customer in ensuring that the data strategy is closely linked to the business strategy and that the architectural framework is adaptable and can be deployed to serve different business objectives.?Engage with us and find out more about how we can work together to make your data work for you.

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