The Case for Data Literacy
In today’s business landscape, it’s rare to encounter a position that doesn’t utilize data to make decisions. Providing teams with quality data to make these integral decisions can prove to be a lengthy process, especially if IT has to be relied on to code queries and uncover relevant data, in an environment where most are working from home in the midst of a pandemic.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
Your product and marketing teams are working together to create a new product. They need to understand what makes your target market tick, but the team isn’t sure it’s asking the right questions of the data analysts to obtain the information on how products are being used and to whom they are being sold to in order to create user profiles.
Your operations team needs to get the big picture of how the business is performing to identify high cost functions and understand how different departments interact with each other. They know there is more context behind the numbers but aren’t sure where to find it.
Your IT, data engineering, and data analytics teams need to migrate data to the cloud into centralized data warehouses to redesign the organization’s existing data architecture, providing for better centralization for analytics. Can the team leverage existing data in the organization to provide a smoother transition?
Your business is adopting a new application to streamline processes hosted on multiple systems. To be successful, the team needs data to feed into those applications but are unsure of how to definitively find what data is available, how it is structured, its meaning and how to access and process it.
If you are a business leader, it is likely challenges like these fill your employees’ days. The common thread is that closing the gap between data literacy and data access could easily solve these challenges. Data Literacy is the cross-functional, shared understanding about the organization’s Data Landscape: those data assets that the organization has available and that it uses to drive decision-making. But, is data literacy the answer?
Your organization is evolving to incorporate more data. The competitive environment demands that your marketing, product, and operational strategies leverage data to the highest extent. You need to ask yourself, does your current data strategy focus on making digestible data available to the employees that need it? Remember, data strategy does not exist in a vacuum: its primary goal is always to enable the data to be better understood. Data should be understandable and usable by all employees in an organization to which data drives their decision making, leading to a higher ROI.
Organizations thrive when all segments are working together in concert: irrespective of their functional lenses. Different functions must be familiar with the existing Data Landscape and speak the same language when leveraging data in their projects. Establishing this shared understanding, both in terms of vocabulary and context, is the only way for efficient cross-functional communication and project execution to happen.
At this point, you may be sold on the prospect of opening organizational data for cross-functional consumption, but you are likely worried about the data security aspect. You are asking the right questions. It is integral to have a platform that enables your organization to establish how the data is accessed: rules around visibility and privacy, ownership/stewardship, data lineage tracking and integration with applications. AfterData offers the security necessary to perform these data discovery functions. Data literacy means autonomy and self-service, so data protection is key.
Our case for data literacy begins with a platform that is visual and interactive, allowing for querying and navigation of interconnected different datasets, displayed through a shared vocabulary and context. It is reinforced by the opportunity to empower your employees to discover insights and leverage data to its full potential. And, it is bolstered by a secure framework that establishes data stewardship and accessibility. Support your data-driven future with AfterData... because after data, comes knowledge.
