The Growing Importance of Data Democratization
Data democratization — the process of making data accessible enterprise-wide — is a topic that’s been bandied about the boardroom for some time.
Data, and universal access to it, is recognized as the key to transforming companies, creating new opportunities, and unlocking the value embedded within organizations — all of which can positively impact a company’s top and bottom line. But companies haven’t progressed as planned.
In fact, recent studies suggest that rather than making progress, many firms are actually falling behind in meeting their data goals.
In a 2019 Big Data and AI Executive Survey by NewVantage Partners, executives from corporations such as American Express, Ford, General Electric, and Johnson & Johnson admitted they weren’t where they wanted to be on the road to data democratization.
Almost three-fourths (72%) of those surveyed said they didn’t feel they had created a data culture yet. Furthermore, 53% said weren’t yet treating data as a business asset and consequently felt their enterprises were not competing effectively on the analytics front.
So, how can CFOs help democratize data and empower more than just C-suite leaders to leverage data to create new opportunities, revenue streams, and drive business growth? The answer lies in managing the human side of the equation.
Data democratization pushes organizations to rethink how they manage, distribute, and consume data. That often means driving a dramatic cultural change in order to realize a financial gain. It also means freeing information from the silos created by internal departmental data, customer data, and external data and turning it into a borderless ecosystem of information.
To achieve this, CFOs have to adopt a new perspective. They need to actively mitigate — and even embrace — the risks involved with increasing accessibility. To do that and limit financial liability, CFOs need to champion better data governance practices to ensure data privacy and security, data quality, data ownership, and compliance with regulatory bodies.
No field today may better exemplify the benefits of achieving data democratization than health care. Drug development is one of the world’s most regulated, expensive, and risk-laden processes. On average, it costs roughly $2.7 billion to bring a new drug to market, according to a Tufts University study.
Democratizing data by creating a shared framework of metadata across clinical trial phases can give researchers real-time data and ensure a seamless exchange of information across all phases of this process.
Pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has used such techniques to achieve better, faster data flow in its clinical trials processes to accelerate its drug pipeline.
