Data democratization is the process of making data accessible to everyone in an organization, irrespective of their technical know-how as a result, make data-informed decisions and build customer experiences powered by data. Inaccessibility of data to business users can lead to loss of opportunities for many organizations.
Purpose of Data Democratization
Before data democratization became popular, business users used to depend a lot on the IT teams to get a better understanding of data. The team would in return provide a huge volume of data which would take a lot of time to go through and analyze. This becomes a roadblock for the company as decision-making becomes time-consuming.
Few Data Democratization Practices
There are some business practices which help to leverage data democratization and overcome the challenges linked to it.
Understanding the data ecosystem. As the company grows, so does the variety, volume and velocity of the data which is associated with it. Gradually, the information becomes siloed in the systems and the access remains with the relevant users/teams only. An in-depth study of the whole data ecosystem helps all the users get a holistic view of the information, not only the flow, the metadata attached to it, but also the relevance of the data.
Data Availability. As of now, data analysis tools mostly lie with the IT and analytics team. Business users depend on this team to get relevant data for analysis and final insights. To reap benefits of democratization, it is important to invest in data integration. Thus, data availability for all teams, irrespective of their technical know-how.
Maintenance of legacy data. Besides making new data accessible to everyone, the process of democratizing data also involves liberating the legacy data. This is the data which was not analyzed or checked while collecting to answer questions. Legacy systems are usually not flexible. This means they indirectly tend to hamper the efforts made to democratize the data. A modern solution to this hindrance is some data integration tools that offer instant API connectivity to both cloud-based systems as well as popular databases.
Optimum data usage. Data governance goes at par with data democratization. Lack of proper knowledge may lead to poor decision making, or even loss of information. Thus, all the employees in the organization must be trained at how to maintain data integrity.
Cloud storage. Cloud storage acts as a central location to prevent data silos. Database management enhances security by masking or encrypting data.
Self-service Analytics. Users should be able to make their own analysis and day-to-day operations. So we need to find a data integration solution which will help connect with people without technical understanding to easily comprehend data.
Current Challenges that require Data Democratization
Some of the most common hurdles which are prevalent in the current scenario are:
a) Limited or restricted access to data
b) Trusting with data
c) Data is accessible but lack of skills makes it difficult to answer questions
d) Data experts in an organization do not have time to educate their non-technical counterparts
e) The available tools are not exactly meant for product teams
Road Ahead
Some leaders fear data democratization due to security concerns. Whereas, reality is data-driven organizations require their employees to get trained and make informed decisions. At the same time proper governance capabilities can help data stewards create the policies needed to protect an organization’s data from misuse.
