Demystifying Data: Making Numbers Approachable

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Imagine a world where data is scattered in bits and pieces! This creates a need for a structured process to organize data and guide businesses towards the path of success. Think about it – businesses collect heaps of data every second. It’s essential to manage, protect, and utilize these resources. Data governance is just that! Data governance offers a set of rules that maintain data’s credibility and usefulness. By instilling order amidst chaos, data governance empowers organizations to navigate complexities, ensuring data’s reliability and maximizing its transformative impact!

We recently hosted Tiankai Feng, Ambassador at DQ & Head of Marketing at DAMA Germany and an expert in the field of data analytics on The Retail Podcast by Vue.ai. During the conversation, he not only explained his experiences and insights on data intricacies but also presented us with a rap on data governance! You can listen to the full conversation here.

Mixing design principles with data analytics

Design thinking principles guide the creation of customer-centric solutions, specifically in domains like marketing. Much like that, merging these principles with data work also presents an innovative approach. In design thinking, the process starts by comprehending the audience, empathizing with their needs, and understanding their decision-making processes.

Similarly, rather than diving into data analysis from the outset, the foundation should be laid by grasping how stakeholders arrive at decisions. This entails delving into when decisions are made, the factors influencing them, and the key milestones driving those decisions. By engaging in candid conversations with stakeholders beforehand, the quality of insights will elevate significantly. This process ensures alignment with the direction of work, eradicating assumptions that might hinder accurate analysis.

The approach of applying design principles not only eliminates potential assumptions that could impede accurate analysis but also helps in transforming the entire data governance process into an engaging experience by making numbers more approachable.

“Instead of starting with analyzing numbers first, we should actually first understand how our stakeholders make decisions”.

Streamlining data ingestion

Data ingestion is essentially a process of collecting, importing, and loading data from various sources into a storage or processing system, such as a database, data warehouse, or data lake. The data ingestion phase plays a major role in data governance. By establishing appropriate rules and harmonization techniques during data entry, a substantial proportion of potential data challenges can be proactively managed. This proactive approach to streamlining data minimizes the emergence of significant issues down the line, leaving only minor technical glitches that can be easily rectified.

The significance of accurate data ingestion becomes even more pronounced in the context of training artificial intelligence (AI) systems. AI’s ability to learn and improve relies heavily on the data it’s trained with. If the data fed into AI is flawed, the system not only learns from it but also reinforces the inaccuracies, potentially leading to skewed outcomes.

To harness the true potential of AI, it is crucial to establish a training set that serves as datum for generating accurate data. This foundational dataset empowers AI to contribute to data enhancement, serving as a guiding light to improve data quality.

AI’s role in data governance

AI can indeed be a powerful ally in data governance, aiding in tasks like designing models and crafting content. However, when it comes to critical aspects like explaining complex concepts, defining KPIs, or creating data models, the human touch remains crucial. While AI can assist in generating content, we need to guide it with the right inputs to ensure accuracy and relevance. This shifts the role from manual creation to strategic prompting. Complete automation of tasks isn’t the goal, but businesses should harness AI to elevate work, not replace expertise.

“Working in segway between business and tech,one foot in each world all data in check!”

It’s safe to say that data governance is an essential pillar when it comes to data. Data governance ensures that data is accurate, consistent, and secure. Streamlining data optimizes efficiency and enables organizations to proactively manage a substantial proportion of potential data challenges. Combining design principles with data, businesses can eliminate potential assumptions that could disrupt accurate analysis. It can also transform the data governance process into an engaging experience by making numbers more approachable.

In unison, these elements form a solid foundation for organizations to harness the true potential of their data!

---