Data for all — the democratization of data

However, we want to focus on democratizing data in a corporate context. In addition to financial capital, employees — and now also data — are among the highest company values.

In the age of digitization, the introduction of a 'data-driven' corporate culture is therefore one of the most important and valuable measures that must be taken into account in business today. So if 'data is the new oil, 'then it is all the more important to make this data available to as many people in the company as possible in order to get maximum benefit from it.

Especially when it comes to statistics, reporting and data analyses, companies often have 'data silos' that have grown over decades - everyone cooks their own soup, everyone draws on different data - and different departments come up with different results. Reports cannot be compared and the decision maker is faced with the agony of choosing which paper he should now believe.

The democratization of data therefore means that every employee has access to relevant data and that there is a shared data catalog that provides the relevant data sources in the same form, depending on the employee.

Until not too long ago, data was still clearly owned by the IT department. Even though the users of the data are typically not IT but finance, controlling, marketing, sales, etc., you always had to ask IT for specific queries or reports.
By democratizing data, this often limiting factor is removed.

As a result, there can of course be concern that data is being misinterpreted. However, the opposite is the case: In practice, the misinterpretation of data happens exactly when data silos exist and individuals in a department ask a single, albeit very tech-savvy, programmer from the IT department for certain key figures.

Data governance: The introduction of the democratization of data requires clear control of the data catalog, which is not defined by technicians, but by number-savvy employees and decision makers across departments. This includes, of course and necessarily, the control of access authorizations.

With this data catalog and the use of modern self-service analytics applications, the maximum benefit can be derived from the 'new oil, 'the company-relevant data provided centrally and uniformly. As a result, insights from data and the proactive control of processes are not reserved for technology-savvy people, but can revolutionize decision-making and knowledge gain in all areas of the company.