Thursday, March 23, 2023

Democratize and Operationalize Data & Analytics for Better Monetization

TDWI’s James Kobielus recently published a TDWI Best Practices Report on Monetizing Enterprise Data and Analytics. “Monetizing” is no more and no less than using your data and analytics to improve “quantifiable bottom-line financial results.”

He reports that the means by which organizations are improving this monetization are:

• Data Democratization – expanding access to the tools, data, and skills needed to make analytics a driving force in the creation and realization of opportunity.
• Data Operationalization – pursuing data-driven optimization of every decision, process, and interaction to achieve the best quantitative and qualitative results
• Data Productization – determining whether the results of data democratizaion and operationalization are themselves a marketable means of improving bottom-line financial results.

The report, co-sponsored by SAP and Snowflake, analyzes the results of TDWI’s survey of 185 corporate exec/VP/ directors, data analysts, line-of-business managers, architects/engineers, business analysts, and others.

It is important to note that the three pursuits James names are not independent of each other: data democratization empowers the individual constituents that make up the organization to make granular use of data and analytics that touch on all operational decisions, processes, and interactions. Without the operational granularity enabled by data democratization, it is unlikely that the results of the organization’s analytics will become a marketable product.

Report Recommendations

James tells us that “Monetization is where your organization’s investments in data management, advanced analytics, and cloud computing pay off.” To achieve this monetization, he recommends that organizations:

• Ensure organizational factors are in place for success
• Don’t forget about governance and other procedural workflows.
• Ensure the right technology is in place.
• Perform a comprehensive inventory
• Understand who would value your data, why, and how much.
• Clarify data ownership and privacy.
• Maintain governance and visibility
• Consider adopting modern cloud-native data engineering and data science platforms.

Achieving Data Democratization Using APOS Live Data Gateway

Clearly, the monetization of data and analytics is a process, and like all processes it has a first step. That initial step is data democratization.

Data democratization, as James notes, requires organizational buy-in, access to tools, and access to data in the organization’s Analytics platform, all while safeguarding governance, data ownership, and privacy.

APOS partners with both SAP and Snowflake, the co-sponsors of this report. Our APOS Live Data Gateway is a key, trusted means of establishing live data connectivity between Analytics (such as SAP Analytics Cloud and disparate data assets (such as the Snowflake Data Cloud Platform). Data democratization requires the secure and seamless flow of data within increasingly complex and cloud-based data architecture. APOS Live Data Gateway releases the value of your data while safeguarding data access and governance through virtualized data connectivity.

In an earlier post, TDWI Maturity Models & APOS Live Data Gateway, I noted that APOS Live Data Gateway is a fit with both the Data Management and Analytics maturity models proposed by TDWI. This APOS solution enhances an organization’s data fabric by

• Extending Analytics live connectivity to non-SAP data assets
• Enabling self-serve analytics – based on self service data modelling, allowing users to create views on data assets to form a semantic layer
• Virtualizing connectivity – creating a single, simplified and consistent connection point into the available relational, OLAP, Cloud, and Hadoop data
• Leveraging the security and governance inherent in the organization’s data assets

The same points apply to the data democratization need. By enhancing your organization’s data fabric, APOS Live Data Gateway makes self-service Analytics and data modelling on more data available for more people, while maintaining data security and governance.

Enterprise Data Governance

In another earlier post, we looked at a TDWI white paper in their Solution Landscape series, Enterprise Data Governance, in which James Kobielus lays out the data governance difficulties faced by organizations re-imagining their IT infrastructure in the Cloud. He recommends that organizations “align [their] enterprise’s data governance and IT infrastructure sourcing strategies.”

APOS solutions for cloud-based analytics platforms align with the data governance principles outlined by Kobielus and can be integral to the goal of establishing and maintaining a well regulated and performative data fabric.

About APOS Live Data Gateway

APOS Live Data Gateway is a middleware platform which provides virtualized data connection and data transformation to enable live data connectivity and expanded data source options, with a primary focus on non-SAP data sources. It consists of three layers:

• Data Virtualization layer – Provides a single point of connection to a wide range of data sources. It respects existing database security and integrates with established single sign-on protocols.
• Data Preparation layer – Provides a semantic layer rendering business friendly naming conventions to simplify self-service data access for report builders and govern access to data
• Semantic Data Consumption layer – Makes needed translations for secure consumption by applications and acts as a unified consumption layer serving data to analytics consumers

In other words, APOS Live Data Gateway delivers trustworthy, relevant and consumable data using data naming conventions from your business glossary.

Learn more about APOS Live Data Gateway.