95,000 Instagram Stories shared. In just 1 minute. 197.6 million emails sent. In just 1 minute. 500 hours of new content uploaded to YouTube. In just 1 minute.
We can become so desensitized to the staggering amounts of data created on the internet every minute, hour, or day that we can become overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to manage what’s being created.
While the majority of companies don’t have to contend with the exponentially increasing amounts of data that Google, Amazon, or Microsoft manage, you know that simply being in business means you have data to deal with. How prepared is your company to protect the authenticity, privacy, and preservation of your data while still making sure you have the access you need? Re-examining your company’s data strategy periodically will ensure your data stays safe and accessible.
Defining data management for your company
Just as the amount of data created increases at a confounding rate, the way we manage this data changes with constant tech advancements. Today, a data strategy is identified as a highly fluid process that supports the acquisition, organization, analysis, access, and preservation of data in support of the business objectives of a company.
It can be useful to examine how industry giants use their data strategy to improve their business outcomes. For example, it’s no secret Netflix collects and analyzes huge amounts of data from their subscribers to keep users engaged with the platform. They also use data to predict which new shows will be popular, allowing Netflix to direct resources into creating specific content. Netflix has also been successful at creating tools to help their data scientists solve large-scale problems through experimentation on a distributed computing platform. Metaflow, the human-friendly Python library built at Netflix and open-sourced in 2019, allowed data scientists to shift from constantly working on infrastructure to problem-solving.
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What is the importance of having an effective data strategy?
Companies without a strong data strategy are susceptible to multiple problems that contribute to inefficient business processes. A solid data strategy will show a deep understanding of the critical parts of your company. Different departments, whether that’s customer service, logistics, or IT, will need to access different sets of data in different ways at different times. If your company’s data strategy doesn’t provide for that, processes will suffer. For example, if a data strategy doesn’t allow for the clear identification and storage of data sets, accidental duplication is possible. That could lead to further mistakes within processes such as double invoicing or incorrect warehouse shipping.