Data democratization is the process of making data and information accessible to everyone, without having to require the involvement of IT. Data democratization is one of the core values for self-service analytics. Self-service analytic tools allow users to gather and analyze data without having to seek help from people who are more technically skilled.
With data democratization, there will be no gatekeepers that create a bottleneck effect at the gateway to the accessibility and understanding of data. However, this means that there is a need to create easier ways for people to understand digital information so that they can make data-driven decisions. The goal is to have anybody use data at any time to make decisions with no barriers to access or understanding.
What are the challenges facing data democratization?
In this section we will be identifying and discussing some of the reasons why data democratization has not been widely used within our work spaces.
Data Storage Locations
Organizations have been successfully storing their data in data warehouses, or business intelligence systems. However, with data stored in multiple locations, it is difficult for an organization to establish a single source of trusted data that everyone can access, use, and rely on.
Limited Data Access
Another issue that we have identified is that although some data can be stored securely, there could still exist a barrier of limited access to everyone. In some organizations, the access control was done through establishing a system of top-down governance where IT manages the data and ensures data quality.
Access controls are usually provided to established administrators and users with more technical knowledge and abilities. However, organizations that provide limited access can form a barrier between the people who managed the data, ensured data quality – and the business users who needed to act on it – this limitation will not allow for the free-flow of information necessary to move with agility.
Inadequate Tools
We have also realized that most of the existing business intelligence and data analysis tools today just were not designed for the self-service analytics world we find ourselves in today.
Why do we need Data Democratization?
The ability to instantly access and understand data will translate into faster decision making, and that will translate into more agile teams. Those teams will have a competitive advantage over slower data-stingy businesses.
When you allow data access to any tier of your company, it empowers individuals at all levels of ownership and responsibility to use the data in their decision making. If the current situation encourages team members to go around data in order to get things done on time, data democratization creates team members that are more data-driven.
For people striving to create the ultimate customer experience, data democratization is a must. The question on their minds should not be if data democratization is coming, but how they can create it in their organization quickly and efficiently.
How to implement it?
Organizations that wish to implement data democratization will have to be open to invest in software and training materials.
One of the first steps of achieving data democratization is to break down information silos. There will be a need for analytics tools capable of desegregating and connecting from different locations, making it manageable from a single place. These tools would help users and employees visualize their data. Having unlimited access to data and digital information will allow the users and organizations to have more transparency, which can lead to making better data-driven decisions that drive success.
With the right tools implemented, team training becomes essential since data democratization depends on the concept of self-service analytics. Team members and people who have access to the data points should be trained up to a level of comfort with the tools, concepts, and processes involved in order to participate, manipulate, and analyze data.
The last step is to share data across your organization with data governance. Mismanagement or misinterpretation of data is a common concern and issue across many organizations and businesses. It is recommended to keep the use of data rules transparent and intuitive for all users. There should be a goal to drive adoption of data usage which is made possible by owning data accuracy, curation, sharing, and training.
Access control from Acho
Data democratization builds upon the foundation of open access and data sharing. Collaboration and teamwork on working projects is the key to efficiency and effective problem solving. Now, you can create an organization on Acho and invite your teammates to join it. Acho is the best cloud database management tool that provides the easiest way to migrate to and scale with the cloud.
Along with the different features that Acho offers, Acho provides users with a collaborative platform. Within the organization, members can share resources and projects with each other. If you have a big data file or a data connection, you can share it with your team members with just a few clicks. At the same time, you can define their permissions to limit what they can do with your resource or project.
Every time you create a new resource or project, you can choose to make it visible to all organization members. Anyone in your organization is able to send a request to access it.
