Data democratisation might be new to the popular vernacular, but its concept is simple: enabling everyone in an organisation, irrespective of their technical knowledge, to work with data, understand data and make informed decisions based on data. There has never been so much data created, crunched and consumed globally. 2020 saw 64.2 zettabytes of data created worldwide, and this trend is set to continue with a projected 180 zettabytes shared by 2025.Whilst the know-how has mostly been sitting in the hands of data analysts, data democratisation represents huge opportunities for businesses. How can organisations benefit from embracing the tools and systems that a democratic data mindset allows employees? A raft of benefits From cost reduction to good company transparency, the pros are plentiful. With employees still working remotely in the UK and abroad, having business information and personalised data points immediately available is crucial to reduce wasted time. It drives agile decision making and can create value by directly impacting revenues. Indeed, a survey showed that the companies with the highest performance have strong data and analytics programmes available across their organisation. They are 40 times more likely to say that data democratisation has given them a competitive advantage and had a greater impact on revenue than their lower-performing peers. A cultural shift Enabling even the most non-technical employees to carry out functions that previously would require coding knowledge or some technical expertise requires an organisation-wide cultural shift, but it is only achievable with the right tools. A survey recently found that the most common issues encountered by non-technical staff include: Not having access to the right data;Lacking trust in the data available;Accessing datasets but lacking the skills and knowledge to use them to answer questions or solve issues;Analytics tools provided by the company not designed for the team or;Data experts not being available to help staff. 88 per cent of business executives say they feel an urgency to invest in data tools as their organisation is low in analytics and business intelligence (BI) maturity, yet seven out of ten say they have not built a data-driven organisation. The right tools Organisations must invest in budget, tools, software, and training. Data visualisation software creates a bridge across multiple sources of data, bringing data together in one virtual place to allow staff to use the data irrelevant of file formats, for instance. Data federation software, meanwhile, uses metadata from various sources to aggregate this data into a virtual database to allow analysis. Cloud storage, an essential tool to break down data silos and centrally store data, also allows for heightened security through data encryption.Through “self-service” BI applications, non-technical employees can interpret data as the software automatically analyses this data for them. With individual and team training, every employee should be able to gain at least a minimum understanding and comfortably use these tools and softwares to be able to make decisions based on the information available. If you are looking for your next role or to bring the right talent to bring data democracy to your organisation, take a look at our latest Data jobs or get in touch with one of our expert consultants to find out more.
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