Better data governance is key for enabling data self-service

It is a profound reality that organizations today broadly want to be more data-driven in their decision-making. However, to be truly data-driven, organizations need to give appropriate self-service access to data to all relevant workers; they need to enable data democratization. In building a cohesive “data culture,” all workers need to be empowered to drive business value via the leverage of data and subsequent data-derived insight.

There are many salient motives to become more data-driven as a business or organization. Today, the motivations for being data-driven tend to be focused on long-term business resiliency rather than immediate or cyclical outcomes. Based on 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise (VotE): Data & Analytics, Data Management & Analytics 2021 survey, the top perceived benefits of being more data-driven as an organization today include “improving business agility” (56%), “improving/automating business processes” (49%), and “improving existing or developing new products and services” (49%). These benefits are an about-face from pre-pandemic years, when immediate cost optimization and increasing sales were the primary concerns.

To achieve data democratization, organizations must appropriately moderate data use while making it easy for employees to get access to the data via self-service. This does not come easily. Security needs to be carefully balanced with access, and productivity cannot be hampered if positive business outcomes are expected. The main challenges in adopting organizational self-service models run the gamut but speak loudly to underlying issues with consistent data management and data governance.