Making the most of your data assets in today’s market

Last month, the Harvard Business Review reported that a recent survey of senior data and analytics leaders in Fortune 1000 companies revealed that only 39.5% of executives said their companies were “managing data as a business asset.” Less than a quarter of respondents said their company had “created a data-driven organization.” And just barely over 20% reported that a “data culture had been established” within their organization.

Why is this concerning? 

To survive and thrive in our digitally driven, rapidly evolving, and information-saturated modern marketplace, it’s crucial for enterprise leaders to treat data as their most valuable asset and maximize the business advantage they get from it.

There are numerous facets to this, including: 

• Optimizing the value of the data you have:
• Handling the volume,  speed, and diverse types of data you’re generating
• Ensuring your data is clean, up-to-date, reliable, secure, well-governed, accessible, usable
• Reimagining how you use your data, to leverage it in direct relation to your business goals. 
• Democratizing your data—making it accessible, intuitive, self-service, trusted, and high-performing, so that all relevant stakeholders can make use of it 
• Reorienting the culture of your enterprise around data
• Making data-driven decisions based on deep insights

Data modernization is one key component of an overall data management initiative. 

At its most basic, data modernization refers to the process of extracting data from disparate, outdated, siloed legacy systems and transferring it to a cloud-based platform, where it is consolidated into a single information source and converted to a more usable format. For example, one of the essential functions of data modernization is converting unstructured data—photo/video/audio in social feeds, customer comments, texts, instant messages, emails, and so on, all of which are vital assets—into a standard format that can be effectively analyzed and harnessed for better decisions and business growth.

But data modernization is about much more than technology—it’s important to view it as encompassing people and processes as well as technology tools. A data-first approach to modernization means using data as the foundation of your holistic business strategy and the organizing framework for your entire ecosystem. It’s about determining what data is most critical to your enterprise, where and by whom it should be used, and how to leverage it for competitive edge. 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to perform the level of analysis necessary to stay relevant in today’s environment, gain deep insights, and make clear, data-driven decisions when your data is scattered and siloed throughout disparate legacy systems, on-site databases, and miscellaneous storage platforms.

Further, in recent years, two specific trends have made data modernization and the data-first mindset business imperatives: the data explosion (volume, variety, and velocity), and the shifting landscape of work (team members now need access to high quality data remotely and at diverse touchpoints).

The benefits of data modernization:
Migrating your data to the cloud allows you to take the focus off of infrastructure and reduce complexity. Data modernization centralizes your data and standardizes inconsistent formats. It makes it cleaner (removes any duplicate, redundant, invalid, obsolete, or faulty data), more reliable, as well as quicker and easier to access. 

Cloud-based tools offer greater efficiency in data processing and superior analytics.

Data governance—knowing what data you have and how it’s used; determining who manages it and who can access it—is a keystone of data modernization. Migration to the cloud supports strong data governance. It helps you identify sensitive information, improve privacy, security, and compliance, and reduce risk. 

Migration to the cloud improves data resilience, helping avoid downtime in case of disruption—keeping your data assets available and accessible, and speeding recovery and restoration.

Modern cloud-based data systems enable more people in disparate places across your organization to access better data and analytics, and gather deeper insights for more informed decision making.

This unified view of your company’s data (including insights gathered from unstructured data) helps you improve customer experience and identify opportunities—both of which contribute to business growth.

Data modernization and democratization enhance company culture by empowering employees with self-service access to trusted, valuable, usable, and user-friendly data. This encourages knowledge sharing, collaboration, and innovation.

Cloud-based systems save money and boost profit margins. They’re flexible, scalable, and adaptable to demand, making them far more cost effective: choose only the resources you need and use, adjust or cancel as necessary.

Every enterprise is unique and your precise data modernization strategy will depend on numerous factors. The veteran business and technology experts at Lukasa take a partnership approach to every data modernization project. Working side by side with your team to gain a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s goals, data assets and uses, processes, and culture, we help you refine, transform, and democratize your data to leverage it toward business growth and agility in today’s fast-paced digitally driven market.

About Lukasa - lukasa.com
Lukasa empowers small-to-medium-sized businesses by designing and implementing custom business and technology solutions that drive efficiency, productivity, and innovation, enabling them to stay ahead in today’s rapidly-changing competitive landscape.