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August 28, 2017
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Shifting "Data Overload" to "Data Opportunity"
By John Desborough
The opportunity to gain competitive advantage from data is lost without a way to manage all the information in a meaningful way.
According to research by a number of organizations, analysts spend between 45-50% of their time reviewing the quality and consistency of the data and preparing data for analysis. With more and more organizations looking to become "data-driven", the avalanche of data management needs heading downhill towards IT is going to put many organizations on the defensive. With IT stretched incredibly thin in most organizations, a little forethought can help IT from having to answer tough questions about failed deployments when they have to "get a tool and install it NOW!"
Understand what data you currently have: review all the data sources you have and get your stakeholders to define which data elements you need and which are noise.
Ensure the quality and trustworthiness of your data: if they don't trust your data, business users will waste valuable time debating whose numbers are more accurate and not making key business decisions based on good data. Harmonizing your data can make a real difference, but data quality and governance programs must be in place/implemented to preserve the long-term integrity of the data. "Gold copy" data coming out of the harmonization process is the foundation for your analytics success.
Quality trumps quantity in streamlining reporting: agile reporting tools that allow your business to adapt reports as needed over time is essential. Self-service reporting with high-quality, trusted data - as near-real-time as possible - is essential to good decision making AND to becoming a data-driven organization.
If you are trying to empower your IT team to help you become an agile, data-driven organization and are looking for some guidance, let's have a conversation.
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John Desborough is a Director, Consulting and Technology Solutions at MNP. He is an accomplished business solutions program manager and business transformation architect with 30+ years in the information and technology consulting domain. John has extensive background in information/data management and governance with both public and private sector clients on a global scale. Drop John a line to discuss this topic in more detail: [email protected]