In the age of information and technology, data silos are stopping organisations from making informed, data driven decisions. Organisations are collecting more data than ever before. If a data plan has not been established, the collection of vast amounts of data can become a burden as visibility of meaningful insights becomes clouded.
Every day, we work with CFOs and finance professionals across various size organisations who are struggling with siloed data. Rapidly growing volumes of data combined with disparate data is stopping them from deriving valuable insights. Anyone harbouring this responsibility knows that the variances caused by siloed data environments can make accurate reporting near impossible.
When it comes to improving our customer’s ability to provide valuable insights, one component we examine closely is their data storage.
Traditional Data Warehouse Solutions
The problem with traditional data warehouses is that their purpose was to serve only as a central repository. Legacy systems often require intervention from data teams, including, manual tuning, manual upgrades, high levels of maintenance, as well as intensive ongoing management.
Traditional warehouses don’t cater to unstructured data, including valuable information from your social marketing platforms, website traffic, and google analytics.
Similarly, the volume of data collected, compounded with the compute power of legacy storage solutions will cause visibility issues. This will negatively impact reporting, due to slow and delayed access to data.
Enterprise-Wide Data Warehouse
Most medium to large size organisations require a modern data warehouse. These solutions can automate time-intensive manual tasks and remove the need for an intermediary data team. Cloud-based solutions offer an alternatives they are scalable and powerful enough to process large volumes of data with speed.
One of the biggest benefits our clients’ experience from an enterprise-wide data warehouse, is the ability to tie data together in a uniformed way, removing data silos. The modern data warehouse gives you the capability to store integrated and centralised data, ready for mobilisation. Unifying data gives you a broader, strategic view of what you can achieve enterprise wide. By having multiple business units working from one centralised solution, you give people the ability to manage and analyse information. In conclusion, you empower your people to garner new insights from enterprise level data.
Data Quality
The problem with siloed data, is that it does not make for ‘on-demand’ planning and decision making. When it comes to data, consistency, accuracy, and formatting need to be the priority. This allows datasets to be processed and analysed. Many cloud data warehouse solutions simplify the process of data collection and transformation so that it is ready to be analysed.
Siloed data also poses several risks to your business in that it inhibits the use of that data. Unauthorised copies of data can also implicate the quality. Having a single source of truth improves risk management, along with data security – enhancing the overall quality of your data.
Accessibility & Usability
If you want to provide your business with value, it comes down to giving people the ability to monitor and visualise data in an insightful way.
Access to ‘real-time’ data is critical, as it gives viewers context to the data. This allows them to make informed decisions based on up-to-date, accurate results. Fast analytics and reporting means that you will elevate the value of data across the whole organisation.
Solutions such as Snowflake’s Data Cloud can provide your enterprise with a single solution for all your structured and semi-structured data. It allows you to have many workloads, including Data Warehouse, Data Lake, Data Engineering, Data Science, Data Sharing and Data applications.
Taking a look at your current data storage solution is one of the first steps to creating greater data visibility. It might seem daunting to migrate from your existing data warehouse, however, long term you benefit from refocusing data analysts’ energy towards value-adding activities and away from manual maintenance.
If you are finding it difficult to start, or are concerned about data migration, contact us at Minerva Partners.
Minerva is a Management Consultancy laser focussed on business transformation. We assist CFOs and business transformation specialists every day to improve their data management, budgeting, forecasting, and planning. Our goal is to give you back time to focus on business growth and strategy.
