Data Catalog an Indispensable Tool in The Age of Analytics
Data is the life blood of all business. Yet data is only valuable when it can easily transform into information that will empower your business to greater heights.
Let’s face it. Not all businesses have the best data management approach. Many are still using spreadsheets. The real tragedy is that they don’t even realise what they are missing. Especially when it comes to large scale and complex analyses.
In a volatile and inconsistent environment, you need to locate, utilise, analyse, and make decisions in real-time. Traditional approaches to data management are now outdated, time-consuming, inefficient, and will most often lead to to the data platform not being used.
To survive the current market dynamics, it is imperative you modernise your process so you can quickly locate, access and trust your data for faster decision-making. The right technology to make the magic happen is utilising a data catalogue.
A data catalog is essential in every organisation as it synthesis all datasets across line of business by organising data and making it easier to process thereby, helping decision-makers make more meaningful insights and strategies.
Having a data catalog means more time to use data, less time looking for it.
Many businesses use metrics, commonly called Key Performance Indicators (KPI), to measure activities and performance. And depending on the type of business and industry, these metrics which may come from different data sources and a number of applications, are identified, analysed, measured, and reported. If you are spending weeks or even months locating, collating, interpreting and verifying all this data, you are definitely doing things the hard way. You are probably missing the boat, too.
What is a Franken-System?
Your typical Franken-System is the middle layer of your organisational planning systems. It sits on top of the base layer, which consists of the function-specific transaction systems that manage data, such as your ERP, CRM, PLM systems and so on.
It’s known as a Franken-System because the various systems are cobbled together in a way that seems to defy the laws of nature. Perhaps you have an arm from over here (an MS Excel spreadsheet from Finance) and a leg from over there (a PowerPoint reporting template from Sales). You might even have a toe from the senior management team (an email directing changes to a procurement procedure, for example).
Each of the parts of the Franken-System usually comes from a tool that is incredibly useful in the appropriate context, but simply doesn’t work when it comes to sharing information across silos for integrated enterprise planning purposes.
Hey, we love MS Excel for personal data crunching activities too, but would never use it to run an integrated business planning process.
Traditional analytics are obsolete.
After taking months to create your report, you still have to…
By the time you have done all that, it is probably too late to act to extract a better outcome.
One place, many things.
If you don’t have a data catalogue you are most likely drowning in information overload. This must often feel similar to creating a new dictionary, in a language you don’t understand, without alphabetisation.
A data catalogue provides a much better way to locate and access your most up-to-date and trusted data. Integrating all your data sources into a searchable, unified platform, will lead to better efficiency, faster action, more informed decisions, and greatly improved results.
Data creates a competitive advantage.
The difference between businesses that know how to use data as a competitive advantage and those that do not can spell the difference between success and failure. Those that have one, say their data catalogue is their most indispensable tool in this age of analytics. The thing they most use and cannot live without.
