What are the advantages and challenges of data democratisation? Several companies throughout the world now understand more about the data democratisation tools and the link between cloud and data democratisation that can help them in various ways.
However, several organizations are still grappling with data democratisation and ways of generating higher value for all organizational stakeholders.
There is always a balance to be maintained between information sharing and confidential information privacy and management.
The biggest challenge of data democratisation for companies is the optimization of data value while ensuring total compliance with various global regulations like the GDPR in Europe or DPP in Australia, for instance. Other such regulations include the CCPA in California.
The data democratisation strategy in any organization is a mechanism where almost anyone within the same can easily use data for superior decision-making.
Irrespective of the role in the organization, an individual can get access to data and other tools for effectively using the same.
However, some data democratisation trends need to be noted in this case. Organizations do not want everyone to access every kind of data. There are several scenarios where they wish to safeguard confidential information to a select group of people.
Hence, democratisation initiatives are required to take these aspects into account, while ensuring the security of the most valuable and confidential data of organizations.
There are also concerns of companies regarding privacy and other regulations. They also worry about unintentional data usage.
There are several benefits of data democratisation, including the following:
Data democratisation means developing a 360-degree view of targeted customers throughout the organization, through harmonizing, enriching, and integrating existing data on consumers.
If this is accessible throughout the organization, it will help better decisions including marketing spending, customer messaging and communications, and better insights on which product/services customers desire today and in the future, while also enabling a better view of the company’s successes and shortcomings for the top leadership alongside.
Data democratisation will help anyone in the company use this view of the customer to unlock business value in diverse ways.
Innovation often begins on the ground at organizations. Discussions, creativity, and experimentation are all required for breakthroughs and major successes.
When information is always controlled by gatekeepers, it leads to barriers to free and unhindered innovative thought. Data democratisation may enable better innovation as a result.
Data democratisation works on the self-service model, enabling things to be executed quicker and boosting remote working. With access to all information, remote work becomes a breeze, especially with workers choosing and self-analyzing vital elements.
Data democratisation may also enable consumer empowerment. Consumers can get a constant flow of updated data for better experiences.
Service data can be democratized and made downloadable for customers along with usage history, records, and more.
Process efficiency may also be enhanced with suitable data democratisation.
It enables a better understanding of information assets throughout organizations, faster internal processes, better collaboration, and improved outcomes.
There are several challenges that organizations also need to address while initiating data democratisation. These include the following:
With data available everywhere, there will be wide-ranging and more complex security needs. This comes before the need to comply with privacy and data regulations. Multiple data encryption techniques will have to be used, but there will always be gaps to fill and areas to cover.
There will be more concerns about how this vast stream of universally-accessible data is being used. Data privacy is a growing concern, especially for the implementation of data democratisation.
Data access may initially be a breeze, but if it is shared throughout the organization, then there are questions that arise with regard to everyone accessing all data, determining who gets data access in various categories, if all data is useful for all workers in all departments, and how the access works with regard to security and privacy-related aspects.
Trusting this data is another challenge that companies need to address. Accessing and collecting data is often no guarantor of data quality.
Does the company have teams in place for a holistic understanding and filtering of data, its possibilities, limitations, and its true meaning, enabling better visibility for the organization overall? This has to be ensured for the data democratisation drive to be successful.
Hence, as can be seen, data democratisation is on the rise, with several illustrated benefits of the practice for companies. However, the challenges need to be tackled with reliable solutions in order to succeed.
Data democratisation enables easier access to data for everyone in the organization, thereby fostering higher innovation, superior customer understanding, enhanced consumer experiences, and improved remote work.
The challenges of data democratisation include concerns relating to data security, privacy, nature of access, and building trustworthiness within the ecosystem.
Organizations have to chalk out a comprehensive data security policy within the ambit of democratisation, through the implementation of encryption technologies, filling up all possible areas, and prioritizing data access across categories and specific groups.
The best practices include holistic analysis of data while ensuring data quality, enabling universal access on the basis of data usefulness, securing confidential information, complying with data privacy and other regulations, and most importantly, solving the conundrum of who gets access to which data.
