Johannesburg, 13 Jun 2018
Data culture is fast becoming the major priority for companies. It's a gateway to improved competitiveness, but also a looming challenge in a world that generates more data every moment. Whereas other parts of the business rarely appreciate the scale and effort required to bring data into line, IT departments face those realities every day.
This creates a dangerous imbalance, where expectation and reality move further apart. Failure as a catalyst becomes a very real prospect, but one that ideally should be avoided. Yet other than learning the hard way, how can business culture be prodded to play a bigger role around data in companies?
Redefining IT's role through platforms
Ownership of data is a crucial element in that transition: IT departments and their data-centric peers such as data stewards are not meant to be the owners or even custodians of data. IT should only be provisioning the resources needed to handle data. The purpose and place for data should lie on the shoulders of different business units, says Riaan Bekker, Force Solutions Manager at thryve.
In the past this was difficult to accomplish, because technology systems were large, single implementations that tried to serve all corners of the business. This inadvertently always placed IT in the middle of the conversation. But then platforms came into play, says Bekker: "Platforms take a lot off IT's plate. As long as the platform works and the users are willing to engage with it, execution can happen without IT's intervention. Applications are similar: once someone knows how to use Word or Outlook, they don't need IT to hold their hand. Platforms take that idea and spread more services across more users."
A platform creates an environment that accommodates the various processes of a business unit or function. Platforms allow toolsets to be deployed among large groups, integrated across departments and other company boundaries. Cloud platforms do this particularly well, since they can be scaled and managed with ease, not to mention deployed to users with relatively little fanfare.
Platform tools can steer workforces closer to data ownership and appreciation. But, it's important to select the right platform at the right time, one that touches enough parts of the business to galvanise data culture. Yet many overlook a very good candidate for such an opportunity: risk.
Risk: data culture's secret weapon
"Risk is the poster child of grudge activities in a company," says Bekker. "Very few people want to consider risk, because it sounds negative and like a barrier. That's why so many regulations enforce risk-related activities, because people don't want to do it willingly. Risk management has become a bit of a silo activity, even though it's meant to be a function that covers all of the business. It's also being recognised as an important part of strategy and the importance of having a single version of the truth. All of that could apply to data culture in general: data often sits in silos and is fragmented with no definitive version."
Risk is also often hampered by a lack of standardisation. One source could rate risk to a different scale than another. All of these act as barriers to the effective integration and use of risk data for strategic purposes. Addressing them also translates into a potential win for anyone trying to promote data culture.
Traditional risk management and integration tools suffer from the same limitations as other legacy systems: expensive, tough to manage and, if you want to move a plate, you have to move the whole kitchen. But new generations of risk integration platforms are turning that on its ear. These are able to deploy and scale within days, even hours, with flexible tool parameters that accommodate the different capture and interpretation styles found across the company.
In return, the users get their hands on powerful tools that improve their risk management, soon illuminating its worth and encouraging them to want to own those processes. Meanwhile, in the background the data is weighed and balanced, ensuring a single truth is available and up to date for strategic consumption.
"Risk is another type of data that needs to be consistent, accessible and current. But it's needed by most of the business. That's an opportunity for data culture. When IT departments are looking for places where they can make some allies in the drive for better data culture, talk to anyone who works with risk. They have real data-related problems that can be answered with modern cloud platforms. Adopting these platforms gives IT the benefits of modern agile technology, coupled with user tools that reduce intervention and open resources to focus on other areas of the business."
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