Making a Modern Data Centric Organization — Part 1
What is and who is it for?
Well, before talking about the nitti-gritties of making Data centric organization is, we need to understand, what is a Data centric organization, who is it for and then as part of the next article, lets talk about, how to make one and A Data Centric organization using the modern technology infrastructure - A roadmap and the infrastructure.
Discussion details:
Part 1 :
§A Data Centric Organization
§ What is it
§ Who is it for
Part 2 :
§ How to make one
§Using Modern Data Technology Infrastructure
§ Road to Modern Data-Centric Organizations
Part 3 :
§ Modern Data Technology Infrastructure
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
In God we trust, for all others bring Data
W. Edwards Deming
Think about giving top 10 examples of
1. super hit decisions you have made backed by data -
2. super hit decision you have made that is not backed by data…
which decision steered your team / organization in the right direction?
you can easily say, the one backed with data has the likelihood of being approved or called upon for further discussion whereas the one that is not backed by data, has a high likelihood of being rejected.
While Judgement call or gut feeling is important, Data driven decisions makes the experiments repeatable and makes your organization more reliable.
Any decisions taken in Fortune 500 companies must take the test of compliance and legality. Do you put your Data in the same seriousness of Legal or Compliance? Simply put, if you want to make a Data-centric organization, all your decisions has to pass one more component called “Data”. The amount of focus organization puts to comply with regulations, every step, every decision, every process, done in Fortune 500 — directly or indirectly passes through the validation of legal and compliance. We talk about carbon-footprint, ethical employment, legality, compliance, your decision has to go through one of these filters. Isn’t it? Is DATA one of those filters your organization has? It must be compliant with regulation; it has to go through legal and it has to be backed by Data. It’s all in the same line. The moment this benchmark is set, rest of the things will emerge. Data is not a “nice to have” attribute, it is the top mandatory attribute. There is a business price tag on decisions that you make and Business do not run on “Nice to have” attributes so making Data your must have attribute will make your organization Data Centric.
The way you are passing all decisions through compliance and legal, your end state should be you should pass all yourdecisions, and make a robust validation check of data.
What exactly is a Data-Centric Organization
The second definition, i think what makes it a data centric organization is this..
Data is the new oil and it is rightly considered so. But, the top 20 oil producing countries are not the top 20 richest countries in the world. Having oil on your ground alone, does not make you the richest. Not with more crude oil but the one who processes crude oil to petrol makes money. Similarly, having massive amount of data in your organization does not make you a Data-Centric organizaiton.
The value of the data is derived from processing, analytics and actionable insights.
What exactly is a Data-Centric Organization
Test of Data-Centricity
Let’s assume you have been tasked to find out the extent of data-centricity for your organization… what are the parameters or factors you should check?
In my opinion, these should be the key factors.
1. No Decision that you make in your organization, passes without the test of Legal or Compliance. Does it take the test of Data?
2. Is Data the center piece of your architecture where Application and Services operate upon? or Application is the center piece of your architecture?
3. Does your organization’s People, Process and Technology work with a clear intent to generate, organize secure and use information to enhance business outcomes?
4. From the boardroom to engine room to shop room, is data used to derive key results for the given objective?
5. Is Data a strategic asset or capital or is the heart of your organization that propels your organization forward in the desired direction?
6. If there is a conflict between your leader and Data — who wins? if it is your Leader, who wins not backed by Data then you are not a Data-Centric organization. your Data wins?
so, if your answer is yes to all or most of the above questions.
Then you are either Heading or working in a Data Centric Organization.
Who exactly a Data-Centric Organization is for?
Alright, we get what a data centric organization is, but tell me who is it for?
I am a small organization, should i go Data centric? I am a Internet scale organization and what i am dealing with Petabyte, Exabyte, zettabyte or even who knows yottabyte of data and do you think i am not data centric?
In my opinion, Data Centricity should be regardless of the size of the organization or type of industry you are in. I will include 2 more categories to this discussion (1) Brand new organization starting on fresh canvas (2) legacy systems. While we understand instilling Data-centric mindset on a fresh canvas is easier than for legacy systems, with some systems as old as 25 years, it is much harder to evolve to a Data-Centric organization culture overnight and it involves changes to the mindset, knowledge set, toolset etc., — We will have to start somewhere, lets bite the bullet — the time is now. Most of us are talking about Cloud-First or Cloud-Second, alongside, think from what should be in the Center — is it Data or Application?
Ok tell me one thing now, are you not a Customer centric organization, any organization is customer-centric, right? now, to put the customer in the center, you need data. So, i would say, data-centric organization is for everyone. Small, medium, industry scale or internet scale does not matter.
∙Size of the organization does not change if it should be a Data-Centric Organization or not. Whatever the size of data you are generating, the decisions must be based on data centric and not based on intuition.
∙For Startup, the biggest problem is not technology, not solving the problem but is about finding the problem. How can you locate the unnoticed problem that they are not able to spot something because it is not intuitive, or not on the face, how do you locate those hidden problems, Data is the primary tool to unearth this problem.
∙Being Data-Centric is not limited to what data you have. It is about making Decisions based on Data that is generated & processed internally or external and the are not merely judgement or gut based.
∙If your organization business strategy is “Customer-Centric” then to put your customer in the center, you need Data.
To extend on who is it for, Data centric is not limited to what data you have. You might not be generating a single byte of data; data-centric, is not only about leveraging your data. It means, finding data wherever it is available to make the right decisions. It could be either internal or external be it market survey, clickstream, peer competition etc., Key is you do not take decision based on your gut feeling or judgement call — it should be backed by Data and it should be Data driven.. internal or external does not matter.
Let’s take the example of Start-up — should startup’s be Data centric or Application Centric as we may not have all flavors of the data on Day 1 unlike Legacy industry scale or internet scale organization. Yes, true.
But, the biggest challenge in creating startup is not technology, it is not even about solving a problem — then what it is? it is about finding a problem. Every problem is a business opportunity, every problem is a profit opportunity. Data would be the primary tool to locate the unnoticed problem, they are not able to spot something because it is not intuitive or on the face, how do you locate those hidden problems, data can be a tool to unearth this problem.
So, even before deciding what is the problem you are going to solve for your startup, you are in the “Data-Centric” zone.
Next part: How to make a Data Centric Organization.
