Strong data management is critical to business success. Unfortunately, the exponential explosion of data that businesses handle today makes managing it all incredibly complicated. For an enterprise-level company, it can mean dealing with tens of millions of data points, covering hundreds of variables – with new data streaming in real time.
To organize it all in ways that drive the business forward, organizations need a framework to discover, collect, manage, orchestrate, and deliver data in a usable fashion.
For many businesses, data catalogs are the answer to making data accessible. Catalogs not only serve as the infrastructure for accessing data, but they also bridge gaps between where the data comes from, who has access to it, and how stakeholders use it. To say data catalogs are essential in the modern data landscape is an understatement. Today, they’re a must.
The idea of a data catalog is simple. Picture an actual printed catalog you can flip through or scroll online to find information about products. It’s easy to get information about price, product description, the SKU code, and more. A data catalog functions much the same, bringing quantifiable business insights to stakeholders who need them.
Data catalogs are not new. But manual upkeep and data entry often prevented them from being effective resources for businesses. Then, automation entered the fold. Companies used automated metadata management tools to make data catalogs more useful. Unfortunately, they required complex integrations, which continued to stunt the widespread adoption of data catalogs.
Flash forward to today. Emerging technologies resources have enabled data catalogs to become a powerful business tool like never before. Data lakes have reduced the complexity of integrations and brought critical business data into one repository. Data warehouses cleanse, sort, and classify data, which creates a context to form a viable catalog. From there, contextualized data becomes accessible to stakeholders using different business intelligence systems. Facilitating the data happens through an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and yields powerful capabilities.
With so many sources of significant data streaming across the business, companies need a way to organize and contextualize it for broad groups. Catalogs also act as a bridge to make data usable – not just accessible.
In most companies, there traditionally has been a great divide surrounding data. IT knows how to work with the data, while different business units understand how to use it to drive initiatives. Unfortunately, this usually means that neither knows enough to maximize the value of that data. Catalogs solve that problem. They’re a full integration and explanation of data: what it is, how it’s used, and so on.
People from all areas of the business can use a data catalog to find what they need. But that means the catalog itself must be organized and accessible by diverse groups – not just data scientists or IT professionals. When built correctly, a data catalog offers significant insights to broad groups and stakeholders that can be used to improve operations across every facet of the business.
Despite the many advancements that have made modern data catalogs possible, companies still need to embrace a significant data cloud to get the full value. A data catalog isn’t possible without the means to mobilize the data within it.
This pervasive connectivity is the secret to data readiness, promoting user engagement, and accepting data to drive better decision-making. Harnessing the full power of data gives businesses the ability to create great Integrated Experiences for their customers. Everyone can have access to what they need – instantly. Without each step supporting the discovery, capture, aggregation, cleansing, and cataloging of data – with an iPaaS at the center – data remains siloed. And cataloging is impossible.
Businesses that embrace this strategy of enabling data cataloging see the most benefits.
There are significant benefits to mobilizing data for diverse groups across an organization. Prioritizing data ops results in better data availability, which improves the stakeholders’ ability to make better decisions. Here are some practical examples of what this looks like:
Use cases for data catalogs are as diverse as the data that populates them. That means anyone in an organization can use the data catalog to find information and insights about whatever they’re assessing. That can include customer retention strategies, risk analysis, budgeting scenarios, or anything else that requires data-driven insights.
As data expands and becomes more important, and more groups and stakeholders across the business lean on it to power decision-making, data catalogs become essential. But as we’ve seen, a relevant, functioning, accessible data catalog is really the product of good data management. Before companies can embrace a data catalog, they need to embrace the infrastructure to support one.
The single most critical, behind-the-scenes aspect of a data catalog is the mobilization of data. To facilitate its movement from lake to warehouse to catalog and wherever else it needs to go, companies need the convenience that comes with a robust iPaaS solution.
Learn more about the business value of a data catalog in this Eckerson Group ebook
