In today's data-driven world, organisations increasingly recognise the importance of leveraging their data assets to gain a competitive edge. However, many struggle to effectively adopt and utilise data to its full potential. Tamer Elhity, Chief Engineer of Data Platforms at ClearPoint, believes that the key to maximising the value of data lies in empowering business users.
"The key to data adoption is empowering the right people to unlock its value, and the only entity or person who can do this is the relevant business user," says Elhity. "They understand their business very well. They know what they want to achieve, but they may not know how."
Traditional data management approaches often rely heavily on IT departments, creating a bottleneck that hinders business users from accessing and utilising data effectively. This disconnect between data experts and business domain experts can lead to missed opportunities and delayed insights.
To bridge this gap, organisations should focus on providing business users with the tools and platforms they need to become self-sufficient in their data exploration and analysis. Self-service platforms, which allow users to access and combine data from multiple sources through intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces, can be a game-changer in this regard.
By empowering business users with these tools, organisations can accelerate time-to-value and enable their teams to quickly address critical business objectives, such as targeting customers more effectively or reducing churn. This shift towards self-service analytics democratises data and puts the power of insights directly into the hands of those who understand the business best.
However, empowering business users goes beyond just providing the right technology. It also requires a change in organisational culture and mindset. Data literacy programs, aimed at improving the data skills and knowledge of employees across the organisation, play a crucial role in fostering a data-driven culture.
Watch or listen our latest podcast from ClearPoint's GM Platform Engineering Jaco Saunderson and Chief Engineer - Data Platforms Tamer Elhity, as they explore the importance of treating data as a critical asset in organisations.
Additionally, establishing clear data governance policies and procedures is essential to ensure that business users have access to high-quality, trustworthy data. Automating data quality assessments and enforcing data quality standards can help maintain the integrity of the data while still allowing business users the freedom to explore and innovate.
ClearPoint's data adoption framework recognises the importance of empowering business users and provides a pragmatic approach to achieving this goal. By focusing on specific business objectives and working closely with stakeholders to understand their challenges and needs, the framework helps organisations identify the right entry points for their data initiatives and gradually build towards a more data-driven future.
"In the vertical approach, we can select a critical business objective, and then figure out how to reach this objective with technology enablers while touching all the best practises in the data," says Elhity.
The framework takes a strategic yet pragmatic approach, ensuring tangible, measurable business value early and continually. It includes elements such as cataloguing, lineage, integration, quality assessment, and marketplace functionalities, providing a comprehensive view of the data landscape.
By starting with critical business objectives and demonstrating success through initial projects, organisations can create champions within the business who promote the approach to other departments. This helps in scaling and adopting the data strategy across the organisation.
By empowering business users and aligning data initiatives with strategic objectives, organisations can maximise the true value of their data assets and gain a significant advantage in today's fast-paced, data-driven world. The combination of people, technology, and processes under a well-defined framework ensures sustainable and scalable data adoption, fostering innovation and driving business success.
Find out how ClearPoint can enable you to uncover the right insights to drive growth and proactive action through pragmatic data enablement, modern data platforms and AI-powered analytics.
