EMERGING TOOLS AND PLATFORMS
Industry experts agree that, eventually, emerging generations of tools and platforms will only increase in the ability to bring enterprise data into a common, unified place. “Over time, these tools will offer improved ease of use as well as built-in data governance processes, data quality controls, and checks,” said Jackson. “They will also provide full interoperability of data between tools and platforms so that no organization will ever have one single platform. Instead, they will have legacy tools that will be deeply integrated or have best-of-breed solutions that allow data to flow freely between the new tools.”
These tools can have a “profound top-line as well as bottom-line impact,” said Rajagopalan. “They help comply with regulations, improve customer experience, and drive businesses with powerful and actionable insights. Businesses do not have to grapple with a maze of data repositories. Instead, they have timely access to transformed, curated, and contextualized data, powered by intuitive technologies and appropriate resources.”
Ultimately, this new generation of data enablement tools and platforms is helping to expand what’s possible with data. “We used to be data-driven; now we’re driven by true intelligence, with business decisions that are better informed than ever before,” said DeMers. “This trend will continue—we’ll retain decision-making accountability but will be increasingly supported by intelligent systems that get ‘smarter’ as organizations improve data connectivity.”