Break Down Silos with Data Collaboration
What is a Data Silo?
A Data Silo is the collection of data that is accessed by one department only and is inaccessible for the entire organization. This non availability of this data leads to data misinterpretation and may bring down data trust value, affecting the data driven decisions not resulting in expected outcomes. Sometimes it occurs because of internal competition, as one department may see itself as separate from another or its data may be confidential and hence, does not consider sharing the data with the entire organization.
Why do data silos occur?
- Company Culture: In any big enterprise where there are several departments, some of the departments are siloed from each other. This happens because of many reasons such as internal competition and some departments treat themselves as separate from another department either due to roles / responsibilities or geographical barriers.
- Organizational Structure: An ideal organization should have integration among all the departments and must build processes that allows departments to share information and work collaboratively. This reduces the dependency on the data steward and data governance office, while improving the data confidence and data trust value within the organization.
- Technology: Commonly, different departments within the organization may use different technology stack thus making it complex for the departments to share common information due to lack of integration. For example, the marketing team might be using some software, but the sales team might be using some other software. One team’s information might be having information that might be useful to other teams. Most modern-day companies have many applications for their different departments. The organization must integrate the technology stacks within the organization or use the same technologies within the entire organization.
Why do data silos create problems?
- Comprehensive Data View – The relevant connections or dependencies between different data sets can be easily missed if data is siloed. For example, the customer relationship management team has data that attracts a lot of attention in one of the same regions that the marketing team also focused on. Now understand the importance of bringing the information between the CRM and marketing team together and deriving valuable insights.
- Wasted Resources – The organization invests significantly in acquiring data from its own sources as well as 3rd party sources. This data once acquired must be available for all the relevant departments. In many cases it is the opposite, for example procuring the data regarding customer information for the sales team and a separate one for the marketing team. This leads to data duplication and increased costs.
- Data Inconsistency – It’s common practice to store the same information in different places in data silos and there is a high chance of data consistencies. You might update any customer information in one place and not another. To maintain the correct information, you have to maintain the data in one place for better data management.
Breaking Down Data Silos
To eliminate silos sustainably and effectively, enterprises need to welcome a system of record for data that enables collaboration while accessing trustworthy and accurate data. By having a comprehensive conversation about data strategy, enterprises need to focus to build a culture that values insights-driven decision making and collaboration.
Data-Driven Leaders can Transform their Culture by:- Focusing to build a data-enabled enterprise – Every team in the enterprise uses data and every team member must develop some foundational data competencies.
- Understanding that Data is an Asset – Everyone across different departments should recognize the value of the information that they can bring. Data leaders should communicate the ways that data can be used to gain competitive advantage.
- Practicing Collaboration – Every team in the enterprise has specific and unique insights that other teams can benefit from. By focusing on collaboration each team in different departments can drive towards progress.
Amurta’s DIP helps to break down the silos and implement collaboration across your organization. To know more about Amurta’s Data Insights Platform you can request our demo and for any sales queries please contact +1 888 840 0098 and you can email us at sales@amurta.com, we will be happy to assist you.
