How ‘good data’ builds stronger business DNA
We all know the score by now. Every company is supposed to realize that it is now a ‘technology company’ at the core.
Whether a business does indeed specialize in IT services and computing, or in fact trades in cake baking and party supplies – the modern enterprise has to underpin itself with connected applications, database services, and analytics.
These are the things that essentially help define any business as an IT-driven business.
This core truism has given rise to the term data-driven business.
Seemingly meaningless as a piece of terminology on its own, the fact that we now describe business effectiveness and potential profitability as a factor of just how competently any individual enterprise is able to harness data is a big thing. It speaks volumes.
So if products and services are now the flesh and bones of any given business model, then data comes to represent the lifeblood of business.
But we can go deeper and take a blood test.
If data is the lifeblood of the contemporary connected business, then we need to be able to look at our ‘blood work’ and examine the very DNA that goes into making this life force flow.
Healthy blood along with clean, strong, pure and specialized DNA makes a healthy body.
Equally, we can also say that healthy (business-relevant), clean (de-duplicated), strong (securely locked down), pure (unsullied) and specialized (built for a dedicated use) data will ultimately help make a healthy enterprise.
It is this last ‘pure and specialized’ parallel that offers us some real guidance in terms of the way the data-driven business should now attempt to grow.
Once the enterprise has identified good healthy data, then it can use it to expand its business on an exponential level.
So what is ‘good’ data? It is data that relates to business models and processes that have been defined as quantifiably proven and qualitatively best practice in terms of their application in business operations.
“Good data is data that works. It is data relating to systems, services, applications and individual datasets inside specific workflows that work effectively to produce positive and essentially profitable business outcomes,” said Paul Hardy, Chief Innovation Office at ServiceNow.
“Good data forms the basis of trust in an organization and the more you can reuse it, the stronger and potentially quicker a transformation can happen.”
Hardy further explains that good data is reusable data. That’s the secret ingredient in the secret sauce in the services-centric data-driven business.
We know that good DNA is reusable because it can replicate, and this is very important.
