Welcome back to our series on building a successful data ecosystem framework and comprehensive data strategy! If you are just joining us, be sure to check out the first post on data acquisition best practices. This week, Eric Vogelpohl, Managing Director of Tech Strategy at Blueprint, continues with a discussion on cultivating a data-driven culture and how it requires organizations to unearth concealed insights and recognize patterns in the vast quantities of data they amass.
Finding meaning in oceans of data
Trite sayings such as ‘data is the new oil’ miss the mark. We have moved beyond the need to analogize data’s significance to any enterprise. For cultivating a data-driven culture, organizations need to unearth concealed insights and recognize patterns in the vast quantities of data they amass. Data democratization necessitates changes in organization, governance, attitude, and platform that markedly enhance a company’s access to and utilization of data. Importantly, companies must empower their analysts, engineers, and professionals to navigate self-service or self-directed paths with data, thereby maximizing their skills and abilities.
Facing the Challenges
- IT demands: As data and usage demands grow exponentially, traditional project intake routines struggle to keep up. Organizations must adopt more scalable approaches.
- Promoting access: Leaders must recognize the shared responsibility of data management and overcome the “us versus them” mindset, ensuring that security, compliance, and regulatory requirements are met while fostering collaboration.
- Data silos: Data often remains isolated in various systems, making access difficult. Modern data architectures like Databricks’ Lakehouse can greatly improve access by centralizing data, allowing self-service for analysts, data scientists, and decision-makers.
Embracing the path to data democratization
- Top-down commitment: CxOs must passionately embrace and communicate the benefits of a data-driven culture throughout the organization.
- Skill development: Analysts within business functions may need to enhance their skills with various tools and programming languages. Job qualifications should reflect the expectations of a data-driven culture.
- Tailored data governance: Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach, organizations should adopt a purpose-designed governance framework that addresses critical aspects of privacy, security, and compliance while allowing decentralized governance for specific business areas.
- The Lakehouse platform: Legacy data warehouses cannot scale to meet the diverse demands of modern data-driven organizations. Cloud-based platforms like Databricks, which utilize the lakehouse architecture, offer numerous advantages, including independent scaling of storage and compute, customizable data warehouse endpoints, and self-healing data pipelines.
- Departmental self-determination: Encourage departments to choose the tools best suited to their teams’ needs, such as SQL Studio tools, BI tools like Power BI, Tableau and others, product and customer analytics tools like MixPanel, or SaaS data exploration and data science solutions. Avoid top-down, one-size-fits-all “enterprise solutions” and instead promote decentralized decision-making for greater agility.
Unlocking the power of data
Embracing data democratization is crucial for modern organizations seeking to create a data-driven culture, unlock valuable insights, and drive innovation. By addressing the outlined challenges and following the recommended path, your organization can empower teams to harness the full potential of your data assets.
Partner with Blueprint for success
Blueprint is here to support you on this journey. We offer a suite of services that cater to your organization’s unique needs, from data estate design and implementation to data governance strategy and managed services for critical data engineering, ingestion, and support operational duties. Partner with Blueprint to successfully navigate the complexities of data democratization and unleash the true power of your data. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help transform your organization’s approach to data.
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Eric Vogelpohl
About the Author
Eric Vogelpohl is the Managing Director of Tech Strategy at Blueprint. He’s a proven IT professional with more than 20 years of experience and a high degree of technical and business acumen. He has an insatiable passion for all-things-tech, pro-cloud/SaaS, leadership, learning, and sharing ideas on how technology can turn data into information & transform user experiences. He is well-known for his dynamic and engaging speaking sessions at meetups, conferences, and industry events.
