Empowering businesses with data

Suki Dhuphar at Tamr explores the rise of data products

 

Businesses seek innovative methods to make their data usable. But despite having vast amounts of data, many are struggling to extract value from it. The key, which more organisations are now discovering, lies in treating data as a product.

 

This involves implementing a data product strategy, which provides structure to the ownership, processes, and technology needed to ensure a business’s data is clean, curated and continuously updated for downstream consumption.

 

But what exactly is a data product? And how can it be leveraged to create benefits for businesses?

 

Maximising business potential

There are many reasons why businesses aren’t able to extract value from their data. Some use dirty, incomplete or out-of-date data which can lead to flawed decision-making, while others struggle to integrate data across siloed systems, making it harder to gain a holistic view of their customers or suppliers.

 

Data product strategies address these issues by providing a structured approach to data management throughout the product lifecycle, from design to implementation. These strategies help define clear goals and metrics around business objectives such as increasing competitiveness and growth, reducing costs, or minimising risks.

 

A common misconception is that data products are simply raw data sets. Well, simply put, a data product is the best version of data: a consumption-ready set of high-quality, trustworthy, accessible data that can be applied to solve business challenges. 

 

Data products achieve this by giving structure to the ownership, processes, and technology needed to ensure organisations maintain clean, curated, and continuously updated data.

 

Better data: better decision-making

Data products serve as a bridge between an organisation’s data and its business leaders, transforming raw data into tangible assets that showcase its value in achieving defined goals and desired outcomes.

 

Data products drive data usage throughout the organisation, empowering users to not only engage with data but also assess its quality and share feedback. This creates greater trust in the organisation’s data and encourages individuals to access the data they need when they need it.

 

Enriched with built-in data sources, data products fill gaps in internal data while adding additional data attributes that are not present in the original data sources. This enables the improvement of analytics use cases and optimises operational processes to deliver the clean, accurate data that data users require.

 

Data product ownership

For organisations to get the most out of their data products, they require a dedicated data product owner, or manager, to manage and guide the teams responsible for their development and delivery. A Data Product manager plays a pivotal role in ensuring effective data product implementation that creates value for the business.

 

Data Product Managers oversee the intricate process of data platform development. They bear the responsibility of identifying challenges within this process, defining requirements, eliminating obstacles and delivering products that cater to the best interests of internal and/or external customers.

 

They also introduce new and essential skills to the business, including knowledge of where data resides in an organisation and how to access it, the ability to comprehend analytics and utilise them for decision-making, and the capacity to demonstrate the value of data products to data customers.

 

Data Product Managers play a people-centric and strategy-based role that is becoming a crucial component of modern business. By hiring one, businesses position themselves much better to leverage data effectively, meet internal and/or external customer needs, and produce useful data products.

 

Business growth with data products

In an ever-changing business landscape, organisations must effectively harness the power of data and analytics to uncover valuable insights and make informed decisions.

 

Businesses that embrace a data product strategy – with a capable and effective leader at the helm, will lay the valuable data foundations that fuel long-term growth.

 

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Suki Dhuphar is Head of International Business at Tamr

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com