Data democratization

In today’s digital world where we are flooded with a lot of information, data democratization plays a crucial role in modern workplaces. The power of data has been kept in the hands of a few data analysts. These people have the skills and understanding essential to properly unify, crunch, and construe the data for their organizations. As this approach was born out of necessity, most of the employees were not trained how to effectively capitalize on the growing troves of data. However, with the development of new-age technologies capable of making data shareable and interpretable for non-data experts, things have changed. With businesses shifting to workplace flexibility and hybrid office options, data democratization emerging as a great approach to data access within an organization.

Data democratization gives data access to all employees in a company without any hurdles anywhere anytime. If done right, it will catapult organizations to new heights of performance. With the use of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, business intelligence, big data analytics, etc., data is abounding. They are making data democratization more challenging than ever. However, to effectively use this data, businesses need time-tested standards to power analytics, streamline data and create hybrid environments.

Businesses fundamentally want to leverage data for decision-making as data-driven decision-making promises a variety of benefits. Data-driven decisions enable companies to make confident decisions on their marketing strategies or infrastructural changes. Plus, it can also help them become more proactive and dynamic. But, despite an effort to become data-driven, many organizations are not even close to attaining the vision. This is mainly because businesses are facing a growing set of challenges in becoming data-driven organizations.

Data Democratization Challenges in the Hybrid Office

Before going further, first, understand what is the hybrid office? As the name infers, a hybrid office refers to an office setup where each employee has the flexibility to work from the office or anywhere else and have access to the tools and data they need to perform their work. Data democratization in the hybrid office environment means giving data access to all employees anywhere, anytime from any data source. But, a majority of organizations provide access to data only to data analysts, the IT department, or other data professionals. Insights excerpted from data by these individuals might not be accommodating to the other employees. Based on the function and hierarchical level of employees within an organization, each employee or department requires different types of insights.

Benefits of Data Democratization in Hybrid Office

As the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the office work environment, employers are turning to a more flexible, hybrid approach to keep businesses running. Companies that put innovation at the top of their priority throughout the crisis outstrip their competition during recovery. Data democratization is a must as it helps successfully develop a data-driven culture within businesses. It fosters collaboration between employees, boosts employee productivity, and powers innovation. 

Data democratization will also minimize the amount of dark data, the data that is gleaned by enterprise systems but remains unused. Democratizing data can enable large organizations to operate with a few data analysts, enabling every individual in the organization to access data and examine it for better decisions.