Data preparation tools on the market can make the difference, as can IT analytics tools. “IT teams have so far been facilitators of analytics applications for business teams, but have been slow to adopt analytics for analyzing their own processes and evaluating their performance,” said Rakesh Jayaprakash, product manager for ManageEngine. “IT analytics, which involves analyzing data from IT applications, is gaining more traction as more companies realize the value of data that IT applications hold. IT teams should identify and tap into application and machine data that can be used to make business critical decisions. For example, analyzing application logs can help identify sections of code that could potentially be causing the application to respond slowly.”
Advice
Ultimately, the way to measure the success of efforts to reverse the 80/20 ratio is to measure the speed at which businesses can access and leverage data insights. “Always keep business benefit in mind and embrace the perspectives of all the stakeholders—get them to understand and appreciate things from their unique perspective,” Tipi advised. “Find your key differentiating features as a business and do everything you can to replicate and expand them while eliminating friction. Eliminate data friction, analytic friction, operational friction, and measurement and capital reinvestment friction. The tools exist to reduce them all; you only need to ask the right questions to find them.”
Wesselmann urged the approach of taking on an executive sponsor to help bring about organizational commitment to relieving the onerous tasks faced by data teams. “Tie it to corporate initiatives and secure an executive sponsor,” he advised. “For example, if the business objectives are to improve revenue, cut costs, or provide a different service, there is always key data required to execute on that vision. This gives you an idea of where the data management strategy should start and helps you select the right use cases.” And don’t try to boil the ocean, he added, but instead start small, show success, and then move on.
In addition, while technology is an important tool to enable faster data delivery, moving to new approaches, such as AI and machine learning, “does not relieve companies of their need for fundamental data management,” said Dillon. “This goes beyond collecting data and includes ensuring it is available to the appropriate tools and appropriate experts. The success of any new technology will be highly dependent on the corresponding people and processes needed to leverage it.”
Keep in mind that “the definition of a database has completely changed over time,” said Khan. And as that has happened, the data and the required skill sets of DBAs have also changed, he noted. “Database admins need to think of different technologies for their applications and really understand data well if they want to make the most of it.”