Happy (almost) Pi day! Tomorrow we celebrate the irrational and transcendental number known as Pi. Pi dates back to the third century B.C. when Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse attempted to calculate the circumference of a circle. He calculated an infinite number beginning with 3.14. Now, centuries later, in 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to make Pi day, March 14th, a national holiday. Pi day is celebrated in schools around the country to encourage students to engage in the study of mathematics.
Here at Collibra, we don’t shy away from a celebration. We too want to celebrate the number Pi (it also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday!). However, at Collibra, we are not preoccupied with calculating the circumference of a circle. Rather, we are focused on making data meaningful for all Data Citizens.
Here are 3.14 ways to make data meaningful in your organization!
3 barriers to Data Intelligence
- Data deluge. As companies embark on their digital transformation projects, they are faced with an ever-growing and ever-changing volume of data. Digital transformations dramatically increase the volume of data a company deals with on a daily basis. Thus, it can be difficult to find your data and understand which data matters and is valuable. For example, retail companies may have information in many places, from online sales to offline sales to social platforms, and inventory services. If your organization is considering a digital transformation, make sure all your data ducks are in a row before you begin to avoid complications from the data deluge.
- Siloed applications and data fragmentation. Due to the data deluge, companies often have too much data to handle. Large enterprises typically have data stored in numerous environments throughout their organization, often making it difficult to find the right data. For example, at Lockheed Martin data was siloed across the organization within different teams. As a result, employees had to manually request data from different teams within the larger organization, thus slowing time to insight. Without a way to securely enable access to data across an organization, data remains in silos. Customers’ needs go unmet and potential insights remain untapped.
- People and processes. Manual processes are prone to error, are not scalable, and decrease the speed, quality and confidence in decision-making. It is also difficult to share data across an organization without an established process. For example, at many organizations, it can take tens of hours, several meetings, emails, hallway chats and many people to define seemingly simple metrics, like customer lifetime value. Without a centralized process, companies experience a lack of clear communication, collaboration and the duplication of data and effort.
1 solution on the path to Data Intelligence
- Data democratization. Organizations that invest in a solution to give all Data Citizens access to trusted data by connecting the right data, insights, algorithms and people to optimize processes, increase efficiency and drive innovation. Companies must automate critical data processes, as well as enterprise-wide collaboration. For example, as the Senior Center of Excellence Lead, Data Governance at AXA XL states, Data Intelligence “played an important role in [their] journey to build data transparency within [their] organization.” Data transparency and data democratization allow companies like AXA XL to use the right, and most trustworthy data, to make business decisions.
4 beneficial outcomes of Data Intelligence
- Data-centric culture. With access to trusted data, Data Citizens can create a data-centric culture within their organization. Data-centric organizations are more nimble allowing Data Citizens to make faster decisions using the right data and ultimately creating better products and/or experiences for their customers
- Drive digital transformation and innovation. By enabling Data Citizens to easily search for the data they need and understand where the data is coming from so they can make impactful business decisions.
- Innovate and transform. Empowering Data Citizens to use data allows them to make insightful decisions based on trusted data. This increases creativity, strategic thinking and the development of innovative and informed ideas.
- Collaboration. A collaborative environment where Data Citizens share data, reports and information across the organization encourages new ideas based on accurate data. Collaboration in conjunction with trusted data allows organizations to derive business value out of their data to further their goals.
Happy (almost) Pi day from Collibra!
