Data Management

How to Overcome Data Management Challenges

Teresa Wingfield

December 14, 2022

Group of people working on data analysis to overcome data management challenges

An impactful customer experience (CX) requires accurate and relevant data that’s easy to access, manage, and use. For businesses today, this data is the lifeblood for knowing more about customers to optimize CX. However, many organizations are saddled with data management challenges that reveal roadblocks to this data, resulting in an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the wider data set. This has a cascading impact for business teams to interpret data, which can lead to uninformed and less optimal business decisions.

The data management issue isn’t due to the lack of data. Rather, data silos, shadow IT, and aging legacy infrastructure (among other hurdles) all hold a business back from using data effectively to grow and scale. To make matters worse, traditional data management solutions require specialized IT resources and labor-intensive data preparation, which slows down processing. These data challenges also make data inaccessible to non-technical business users, such as sales, marketing, and customer success teams, who need to be more empowered through democratized, easy access to data.

Delivering exceptional CX requires businesses to remember who’s up front and center for them: their customers. This keeps the focus on finding ways to clear their data hurdles and identify useful and repeatable efforts that drive down as many of the hurdles as possible. We’ll further examine challenges, explore ways to clear them, and share best practices to help ensure organizations have the right data available to paint a 360-degree view of their customers.

Data Management Risks to CX

The amount of data businesses can access is no longer a challenge – the gap lies in the quality of that data, the level of access to it, and gaining a clear understanding of how it fits into broader business goals. A recent study found that nearly eight in 10 data management decision-makers believe cataloging issues (such as knowing where data lives and who the owners are) are among the top challenges in the data ecosystem.

This lack of knowledge and poor management of who owns the data and how to access it leads to two major issues: data silos and shadow IT. Silos around data collection limit data sharing. For example, a sales department may have collected data for a customer’s previous sales history. This data would be valuable to a CX team to resolve a customer issue, but the sales department doesn’t share its data with other departments.

Teams unable to access silos can turn to other systems or applications to help plug in missing information. In the example above, the CX team may use unapproved third-party applications or services to source information to resolve the customer’s issue. Without the knowledge of IT, this scenario can turn into a sprawl of unapproved resources for collecting and using data, further deepening the silo conundrum.

Who is at the receiving end of poorly managed data accessibility? Customers. Consumers are demanding a more personalized and unified CX, with a recent study finding that over 75% of consumers are frustrated when their experiences aren’t personalized. If silos or other issues stall customer teams from accessing critical data, it’s hard to create an experience that’s relevant to a customer’s buying journey.

Tackling this issue head-on means assessing if your systems are set up to simplify and automate data integration and provide access to that data across the enterprise. Many traditional data management solutions are laborious and ineffective from a time and money standpoint. To be truly effective, solutions should unify core technologies and function as a one-stop center for all things data.

Modernizing CX Through Unified Systems

It’s evident that customer demands reflect the backdrop of today’s fast-paced society. Any delay can impact the business, making it less proactive in understanding and addressing customer needs in the most meaningful way. To be successful, companies need access to solutions built with data integration and ease-of-use at their core. The Actian Data Platform makes data easy, enabling businesses to simplify how people connect, manage, and analyze their data.

The Actian Data Platform is purpose-built for the future of data-driven businesses. It reduces complexity and risks associated with digital transformation. The Actian platform enables businesses to streamline data processing, getting data into the hands of those who need it in the most flexible and easy way.

With the Actian platform, data is accessible from on-premises, cloud, or hybrid environments. This gives CX teams unparalleled access to business-critical customer data, allowing them to make decisions quicker and create a more engaging experience for customers. Additionally, the Actian platform makes data-driven projects even easier with the ability to have any – or all – of the platform’s capabilities managed or co-managed.

Transforming your data management strategies to improve CX can be tricky, but it’s imperative for organizations to be fully equipped to deliver the best for their customers. See how the Actian Data Platform can modernize your data management strategy.

About Teresa Wingfield

Teresa Wingfield is Director of Product Marketing at Actian, driving awareness of the Actian Data Platform's integration, management, and analytics capabilities. She brings 20+ years in analytics, security, and cloud solutions marketing at industry leaders such as Cisco, McAfee, and VMware. Teresa focuses on helping customers achieve new levels of innovation and revenue with data. On the Actian blog, Teresa highlights the value of analytics-driven solutions in multiple verticals. Check her posts for real-world transformation stories.

Data Analytics

The Bridge From Cloud to Edge for Superior Operational Analytics

Teresa Wingfield

December 12, 2022

people in front of a touch panel displaying a visual representation of data management

Data and analytics are the heartbeat of any business looking to drive revenue and innovate – especially during volatile and uncertain times. Businesses have gradually transitioned away from traditional data centers in favor of cloud data storage and analytics solutions to access data and unlock business insights more easily. We expect more enterprises will transition to the cloud in 2023, as Gartner is projecting that enterprise cloud spending will be nearly $600 billion by next year. That number will continue to climb as data generation continues to explode.

However, for many businesses, relying on the cloud for their data and operational analytics needs is challenging. Distributed workforces located in hard-to-reach areas often suffer from latency due to slow Internet connections. Organizations that rely on real-time insights can’t afford to have a lag between the data that’s being generated and the subsequent analysis.

For maximum output, the flexibility and reliability of cloud services need to be met with the power of edge computing. Here we’ll look at the benefits of bridging cloud and edge for analytics, real-life examples of distributed use cases, and best practices for implementing edge technology.

Operational Analytics is Everywhere

Operational analytics refers to the real-time analysis of information on the internal functions and processes of a business. Examples include: how many orders, calls or service logs are being processed, how much revenue is generated at any given moment, or the current status of shipments or inventories. Industries of all kinds deploy operational analytics, ranging from retailers who use insights to target customers while they’re inside a store, and manufacturers who analyze IoT sensor data to identify and resolve potential problems with production-line equipment before they happen.

Data is being produced at an explosive rate and is growing increasingly complicated to process for analysis. This is particularly true for industries within which data collection is in areas with poor Internet connectivity. Offshore oil platforms are an example. These operations require intense analysis of things such as equipment status, GPS location data, current oil prices and more. Any delay in processing and transmitting data from the oil platform to its headquarters could result in poor maintenance of equipment, support teams troubleshooting issues too slowly, or a miscommunication about the cost of oil.

Edge Analytics Use Cases

To process data in a variety of environments, many businesses have shifted operations to the edge. Edge computing allows businesses to generate, collect, store, and process data locally without relying on Internet connectivity. Rather than worrying about being able to connect to a cloud service provider, users of edge computing can enjoy around-the-clock availability of data and systems, allowing for real-time analysis of operations.

Edge computing is becoming increasingly popular, with Gartner estimating that by 2025, more than 50% of enterprise-critical data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud. This represents a huge opportunity for businesses to capitalize on edge and merge it with their current cloud architecture to ensure continuity with their analytical efforts.

Bridging the cloud to the edge for analytics also offers unprecedented speed in data processing. Without needing a connection, intelligent decisions can be made on the fly based on data that’s instantly generated and available. Additionally, edge analytics can operate on time series, spatial, and other IoT specific data more securely, without worrying about being targeted by external threat actors.

Another use case of analytics on the edge that’s not often discussed is emergency response management in buildings with smart sensors. Devices like fire and smoke sensors can communicate with a dashboard on the edge in the event of an emergency and can automatically trigger a call to a local emergency response team.

The use cases for cloud integration into the edge are numerous, requiring businesses to take careful steps through implementation to reap the benefits.

Bringing in the Edge

Businesses looking to integrate their cloud solutions into the edge for operational analysis must consider many factors. These include having a crystal-clear picture of where data resides, which data points are relevant, when the data expires, and which data needs to be aggregated. Also, constantly moving data to the edge can be costly and there is the potential for network bandwidth, storage and latency issues.

Building the bridge from cloud to edge for operational analytics can take a lot of work, but will up-level analysis of operations, increase security and provide better real-time insights. Take a deeper look into how Actian is modernizing edge application data processing to make data analytics a breeze here.

About Teresa Wingfield

Data Analytics

Vector 6.3 Delivers Easier Administration for Data Analytics

Teresa Wingfield

December 9, 2022

Dark blue illustration with orange bars symbolizing data analysis, one of the benefits of Vector 6.3

Did you know that Vector is one of the world’s fastest analytics databases? We’re excited to announce that a recent Enterprise Strategy Group evaluation found that Vector can outperform its competitors by up to 7.9x.

Adding to this momentum is the release of Vector 6.3 in early December. Key highlights of the release include making administration easier, enhancing engine automation, and improving programmer productivity. We’re sharing six new data analytics features and benefits that will improve your data analytics journey.

Three main groups of benefits of Vector 6.3

Automatic Diagnostic Log Rotation Ensures Reliable Archives

Since a log file for the Vector X100 analytics engine tends to grow very large over time, log rotation is useful to archive a current log file and open a new one. Previously a manual process, Vector 6.3 introduces automatic diagnostic log rotation based on either the log file’s maximum size or a custom time interval (e.g., every 30 days).

Query Result Caching – Spill to Disk Eliminates Waiting for Available Memory

Vector 6.3 further extends the query result cache with an option to spill cached results to disk when cache memory runs low. A job/workload does not have to wait for memory to free up before completion.

Vector disables spill to disk by default so that its overhead and workspace utilization doesn’t impact your setup after an upgrade. Once enabled, the management database can monitor spill to disk activity.

Smart Min-Max Indexing Improves Memory Management

A Vector database table can have up to a thousand columns. By default, Vector creates Min-Max indexes on all columns that require large amounts of memory when many tables or tables with lots of columns are created. Min-max reduces the number of columns inspected through new auto-tune functionality that determines scores for index and non-index columns. Based on these scores, Vector decides which columns it should add to the min-max index and which ones it should drop. As a result, this reduces memory consumption without negatively impacting query performance.

Shareable DBA User Defined Functions (UDFs) Increase Developer Productivity

Vector supports the creation of UDFs to use in queries to extend database functionality. With release 6.3, users can now share and reuse UDFs created by DBAs through user groups and authentication, enhancing collaboration and self-service.

Exception Handling for Database Procedures Provides Greater Control

Improved exception handling for database procedures is now available for managing unwanted and unexpected events due to run-time errors caused by faulty design, hardware failure and code issues.

Pattern Matching Makes String Manipulation Easier

Users can now run pattern matching queries with SIMILAR TO on Vector. Vector can determine character string similarity based on character repetition, limiting character sets, character properties such as letter, hex, case, punctuation mark, and grouped characters.

Navigate Your Analytics Journey Better With Vector

Visit our website to learn more about Vector’s extensive performance optimization, features, and use cases for data analytics.

About Teresa Wingfield

Data Intelligence

The Benefits of Data in the Insurance Industry

Actian Corporation

December 7, 2022

Insurers today have access to massive amounts of data, including past and real-time data, enabling them to make data-driven decisions. By deepening the analysis of this data, insurers get the information they need to adapt their products and services, improve processes, make quick and more strategic business choices, and better fight fraud. Here is a look at the main benefits of data for insurers.

The insurance industry is based on the identification, measurement, evaluation, anticipation, and prediction of risk. The objective? To control this risk. To accomplish these complex missions, insurance carriers have always used data. However, through the digital transformation of this business sector, the volume of insurance data has exploded. For example, according to a study published in early 2022, it appears that nearly 80% of insurers now use predictive models and algorithms to identify fraud. That figure was as low as 56% in 2018. Another report, this time by Friss on insurance fraud, points out that when it comes to detecting fraud, 100% of insurers surveyed have mechanisms in place to identify potentially fraudulent claims.

From customer knowledge to the adaptation of insurance products, and the fight against fraud, the use of insurance data has many advantages:

Benefit 1: Better Customer Retention

The insurance industry is particularly competitive, as it is becoming easier and easier for customers to cancel their insurance contracts. Customers are therefore more volatile and require a much more ambitious customer retention strategy. With insurance data, insurance companies can better adapt their products & offerings to the profile of the insured.

Benefit 2: More Accurate Risk Assessment

To cope with the hyper-competition that now characterizes the insurance industry, one must be able to offer contracts and pricing packages that are calculated as accurately as possible. The massive use of data and algorithms allows insurers to assess risks more accurately in order to offer coverage that is personalized to the reality of policyholders’ risk exposure. As a result, pay-as-you-go and on-demand insurance programs are booming.

Benefit 3: Fraud Reduction

The bane of an insurance carrier’s profitability is fraud. Not only do false claims represent a colossal loss of revenue for insurance companies, but they also burden internal processes, inducing the use of adjusters, investigators, and even particularly costly litigation procedures. By using the right data, in the right place, and in real-time, insurers can detect potential fraud as quickly as possible throughout the life cycle of the contract, from the signature to the claim management.

Benefit 4: More Relevant Product/Service Innovation

Understanding and anticipating policyholders’ needs in order to offer tailored policies is a major challenge for insurance companies. To do so, they rely essentially on how the claims are identified through data. Defining insurance products, estimating risk, and controlling costs are all essential lessons learned directly from insurance data.

Benefit 5: Process Automation

One of the levers of competitiveness for insurance companies, and Insurtechs in particular, is process automation. From the underwriting of contracts to their day-to-day management, data makes it possible to automate a large number of operations. This automation helps reduce the time it takes to process customer requests (in order to maximize customer satisfaction), to control operational costs, to refocus teams on higher value-added tasks. The latter being essential to combat the difficulties of retaining talent in a tight job market.

Benefit 6: Personalized Customer Paths

No one ever solicits their insurance company for fun! Broken windshield, road accidents, water damage. Every interaction with an insurer is a moment of stress and worry for the consumer. With data, the insurer is able to support each of these interactions with a 100% personalized approach and to ensure an optimized follow-up of the claim.

About Actian Corporation

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale. Actian data intelligence solutions help streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed to be flexible, Actian solutions integrate seamlessly and perform reliably across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Learn more about Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, at actian.com.

Data Management

Uplevel Your Cloud Migration Strategy – No Matter Your Organization Size

Teresa Wingfield

December 7, 2022

overlaid graphs of statistics and data, representing a cloud migration strategy

Cloud migration and digital transformation are among the top ways for businesses to modernize and keep pace with competitors. Moving these endeavors forward is more about the underlying parts involved than the infrastructure. Enabling data-driven operations and intelligence can help ensure success.

When businesses begin their transformation and modernization journey, it may be inevitable to run into roadblocks, such as having limited budget and IT resources or a business culture that’s slow or resistant to technological change. Unfortunately, the pace of digital transformation has grown significantly greater. As a result, businesses need to find ways to clear these hurdles or risk losing customers.

No matter the size of an organization’s IT architecture, cloud data migration can provide many advantages. Moving data to the cloud is becoming more useful as increasingly complex datasets require intense analysis to derive business value. Let’s take a look at the benefits of up-leveling your cloud migration strategy.

Cloud Migration Hurdles

Cloud migration involves complicated processes with lots of moving parts. Businesses must consider the type of cloud vendor they select, storage capabilities, how much (and which type of) data they want to move, and how to access it for analysis. Low budgets and limited IT resources often limit brands in accessing the full benefits of the cloud.

To combat these issues, cloud migration is imperative for businesses that need mission-critical technology to meet their goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). To help gain buy-in for a cloud migration journey, IT leaders must demonstrate the value of the cloud and its ability to easily provide data that businesses can leverage for insights that drive growth.

When searching for a solution, organizations need to look for a vendor that allows them to transform their business processes with a flexible and fully managed approach. The benefits of an effective cloud migration strategy are numerous, and when done properly, can enable any business to start small with its digital transformation, scale quickly, and make a meaningful impact on the organization.

The Benefits of Modernizing Cloud Migration

Businesses need fast and simple access to their data, which requires integration with cloud services that provide flexibility and ease of use. Solutions such as Actian’s fully managed Actian Data Platform can run on all major cloud providers, including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure.

Cloud agility enables businesses to quickly access data needed for analysis, whether they are examining customer purchasing behavior or looking to improve internal processes. Effective cloud data platforms allow for easy creation of data pipelines to move and transform data from source systems to a centralized repository and include a wide range of services for data management and analytics.

Data unification gives teams a clear, holistic view of data so they can understand how the business is doing in real-time. The Actian Data Platform enables users to pull data from anywhere and create visualizations and dashboards. These tools offer a single pane view into complicated trends and insights on how to better meet the changing needs of customers and streamline complex processes. Taking the next step in a cloud migration or digital transformation journey can be daunting. Without easy access to data in the cloud, businesses may find it difficult to scale, innovate, compete to meet the dynamic needs of customers and increase revenue. When business leaders keep growth and innovation on top-of-mind, they’re more likely to be guided by a clear roadmap and supported by a strong cloud migration strategy.

To see how Actian can help transform your brand’s cloud migration journey, no matter the size of your organization, read more about the Actian Data Platform.

About Teresa Wingfield

Data Intelligence

BARC Data Culture Survey 23 – Data-Driven Trends

Actian Corporation

December 7, 2022

data-driven-decision-BARC-data-culture-survey-23

In last year’s BARC Data Culture Survey 22, “data access” was selected as the most relevant aspect of BARC’s ‘Data Culture Framework’. Therefore, this year, BARC examined the current status, experiences, and plans of companies concerning their efforts to create a positive data culture with a special emphasis on ‘data access’.

The study was based on the findings of a worldwide online survey conducted in July and August 2022. The survey was promoted within the BARC panel, as well as via websites and newsletter distribution lists. A total of 384 people took part, representing a variety of different roles, industries, and company sizes.

In this article, discover the current status of data-driven decision-making of BARC’s Data Culture Survey 23.

Data-Driven Decision-Making vs. Gut Feeling

74% of “best-in-class”* companies rely on data-driven decision-making.

Over the years, companies have relied on data & analytics for decision-making rather than purely on experience or gut feeling. However, while the share of companies making decisions solely based on experience is decreasing, it isn’t completely off the radar. In fact, according to the BARC Data Culture Survey 23, half of the companies surveyed said their decision-making process was based on a mixture of data and gut feeling. In particular, there was a massive shift towards data-driven decision-making in 2021, probably driven by external factors such as the COVID-19 crisis.

The value of data for decision-making thus remains clear to most organizations, especially in the current economic and political environment. The challenge was more related to being able to bring value to data at a reasonable cost.

It is noteworthy that 74% of “best-in-class”* companies completely rely on data to make decisions. If we look closely at the numbers below, this reveals a significant difference compared to the average of all participating companies, of which only 32% make decisions purely based on data.

The Most Data-Driven Departments of a Company

When asked about the departments they considered to be the most data-driven, 59% of companies responded that it was their finance/accounting department, followed by their sales & distribution department at 44%. These answers were expected, as these areas have the highest BI and analytics tools usage. BARC also observed that the Logistics/Supply Chain department as well as the Production department were a lot higher than expected. This increase is the result of the rise of IoT technologies in recent years.

Data-Driven Decision Support Should be at All Levels of the Company

Data knowledge is key to the successful use of data & analytics – 83% of companies confirm that they see data/information as an asset, but only half of the companies surveyed use data as a major source of revenue. Indeed, 74% of users identify data knowledge as the collecting, linking, and analyzing of metadata.

Metadata provides contextual information necessary to help data users find, understand, and trust their data. However, the study shows that few companies currently invest in technologies that help leverage metadata – whereas 95% of the “best-in-class”* companies acknowledge the importance of investing in such technologies.

The use of data at various levels of decision-making is noteworthy: At both operational and tactical levels in business units, 39% of survey respondents claim that decisions are not made on the basis of data. This is quite a high figure – data-driven decision support should be in place throughout the company at all levels.

* The sample was divided into ‘best-in-class’ and ‘laggards’ in order to identify differences in terms of the current data culture within organizations. This division was made based on the question “How would you rate your company’s data culture compared to your main competitors?”. Companies that have a much better data culture than their competitors are referred to as ‘best-in-class’, while those who have a slightly or much worse data culture than their competitors are classed as ‘laggards’.

About Actian Corporation

Data Platform

Moving Your Data Warehouse to a Modern Cloud Data Platform

Teresa Wingfield

December 5, 2022

Corridor with lockers to the left and right representing a data warehouse

Do you still have an on-premises data warehouse? If so, are you evaluating whether you should move it to a cloud data platform? There are two main things to consider when making this decision: the advantages of the cloud versus on-premises deployment and the advantages of a modern cloud data platform versus an on-premises data warehouse.

Cloud Modernization

Regarding cloud deployments, I enthusiastically agree with David Linthicum’s statement that the industry has oversold and overstated cloud cost savings. David is a noted cloud expert and is the Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte Consulting. I recommend that you read his InfoWorld Article, Was moving to cloud a mistake, to get some great advice on how to improve cloud return on investment (ROI).

I have also written a blog post called Will Cloud Data Warehouses Really Help You Cut Costs? In this post, I discuss why asking how much money you will save by moving your on-premises solution to the cloud may be the wrong question. Instead, you should be looking at cloud deployment benefits such as greater agility, accelerating innovation, ensuring availability, expanding reach, and more.

Data Platform Modernization

The Actian Data Platform makes it easy for businesses to connect, manage, and analyze their data in the cloud and on-premises if this is still needed for certain use cases. The table below highlights some of the main advantages that the Actian Data Platform offers versus what’s typically available in a traditional on-premises data warehouse.

	*Actian Data Platform*	*Typical On-Premises Data Warehouse*
Solution Breadth	One solution for data integration, data management and data analytics lowers risk, cost, and complexity while allowing easier sharing and reuse across projects.	Cobbled together solutions from different vendors are complex, time consuming, and costly and make sharing and reuse difficult.
*Scalability*	Cloud elasticity provides the ability to quickly shrink or grow CPU capacity, memory, and storage resources. Composable infrastructure and analytics make data readily shareable across use cases. Management, governance, and compliance controls are consistent.	Overprovisioning is required to accommodate peak demand. Rigid systems make it hard to share data. Controls across data are weak and inconsistent.
Timeliness	Real-Time data empowers “next best action” decisions in the moment.	Historical data with weeks to respond to requests for the right data.
Data Security + Data Privacy	Data security and data privacy using fine-grained techniques such as column-level de-identification and dynamic data masking. These prevent inappropriate access to personally identifiable information, sensitive personal information, and sensitive data.	Data security focus with limited support for data privacy.
*Data in Context*	Real-time analytics is embedded within the environment users operate in for instant accessibility.	Users need to leave their workflow to look at data analytics in a separate set of tools which slows decision making.
*Data Democratization*	Technical and business users with no IT involvement. Broad use by front-line workers across finance, sales and marketing, supply chain, customer service, customer success, healthcare, spend management, fraud, and risk management.	Technically savvy data engineers, data scientists and analysts representing a small percentage of an organization’s employees.

Accelerate Modernization With the Actian Data Platform

The Actian Data Platform is trusted, flexible, and easy to use. These six features illustrate what ambitious businesses like yours can do to help modernize your on-premises data warehouse:

Quick Ingestion: A single user interface for self-service integration, analytics, and management. This enables anyone to be a data practitioner and helps build a data-driven culture.

Superior Price Performance: Built to maximize resource utilization delivering unmatched performance and an unbeatable total cost of ownership.

REAL Real-Time: Patented technology allows real-time data updates without impacting query performance and costs. This enables data consumers to analyze always up-to-date data.

Single Platform: One solution for integration, management and analytics lowers risk, cost, and complexity while making sharing and reuse across projects easy.

Flexible Anywhere Deployment: Any cloud, hybrid, and on-premises – plus it is API-driven to embed analytics within applications and systems so that relevant data is delivered in context.

Role-Based Security Policies: Reduce the time and effort to comply with data and privacy regulations without compromising the usefulness of data to intended consumers.

About Teresa Wingfield

Data Management

Data Silos Suck. Here’s How to Break Them Down.

Teresa Wingfield

December 1, 2022

Business person writing on a virtual whiteboard with data silos

Data management issues are common among businesses today. These issues have had a direct negative impact on marketing departments, with over 60% of CMOs agreeing that gaps in marketing data and analytics (D&A) and marketing technology are hindering strategic growth strategies. Data and systems stored in silos represent a huge problem for data managers, who are unable to access critical data that they need to deliver a great customer experience (CX). At a time when customers are more likely than ever to try a new brand after a bad buying experience, ensuring that data is freely accessible to those who need it is mission-critical for businesses to drive revenue.

Let’s take a look at the problems faced with siloed data, how to break these silos down, and explore the benefits of a fully connected data enterprise.

The Problems in the Silo

To understand the problems with data silo challenges, it helps to understand what a data silo is. A data silo is any independent repository of data within an organization. A key characteristic of a data silo is that only a small group of people can access it. This can occur when independent business units, with their own objectives and IT budgets, maintain different versions of data. For example, sales may keep its data on customer buying trends separate from the customer service team’s customer data which includes messages, feedback, and returns.

This fragmentation leads to duplicate data, data integration issues, and, more importantly, has negative impacts on the broader organization. Data silos slow down productivity, hinder business agility, and frequently paint incorrect pictures of customers, leading to a poor CX. Also, IT teams often hoard data and create silos to receive a greater share of the IT budget.

Businesses need a plan to assess where data silos exist and how to knock them down. This takes thorough analysis, cultural change, and an infrastructure for data management that can support enterprise needs.

Break Down Data Silos

The first step for any business to break down silos is to take a holistic look at its culture. Without interdepartmental collaboration and cooperation across the business, there won’t be the opportunity to share data for analysis. Only in a unified setting can a data silo truly be broken down.

Businesses must establish a company-wide data model that all relevant stakeholders in the organization can easily access and use. A standard model helps inform businesses on next steps and analyze customers, whereas a lack of standardization (including data-usage policies, processes, and controls) can lead to a patchwork of datasets used in disparate ways.

Once a company establishes standards and builds a collaborative culture, businesses should implement a data platform solution that can scale and grow with the organization.

Benefits of Effective Data Platform Solutions

When data is trapped in spreadsheets, databases, data warehouses and applications, it can be nearly impossible for IT to prepare for future growth and innovation, making it even harder to spin up new projects. An effective data management platform must be able to break down silos and unlock the full potential of data for analytics, reporting, automation, and developing mission-critical insights.

The Actian Data Platform allows businesses to unify disparate data for business decision-making to drive efficiency and growth. The Actian platform includes data integration to extract data from multiple data sources. From there, the Actian platform combines that data to give users a single pane view for insights and analysis.

Break free of siloed, stale, and incomplete data, routine reporting and harness real-time data and analytics to fuel faster innovation, scale your processes, and shift direction on a dime. Silos suck, but together with Actian, you can unify siloed data and get more value from your data.

About Teresa Wingfield

Actian Life

What Makes an Innovative IT Leader? These Are the Top Skills to Hone

Steve Padgett

November 28, 2022

Team chatting, reinforcing their listening and communication skills in a world of digital transformation

Technology leaders face a plethora of new challenges as they attempt to deliver novel solutions and adapt to change more quickly. Obstacles include budget cuts due to inflation, technical skills shortages, and repercussions from rushing recent technology adoption, which can lead to security gaps, compatibility issues, poor performance, and much more. However, IT leaders also find themselves in a unique position to meet business goals and drive value upstream through digital transformation and technology innovation.

IT leaders require a diverse skillset and background to fuel innovative thinking and solve complex business issues. For them, innovation is an inward process that begins with leaders with an innate ability to apply strategic and creative thinking.

There are many leadership qualities that help fuel innovation. The most effective leaders foster collaboration and a bias for action within their teams. They motivate employees to perform their best, encourage exploration of cutting-edge technology and help the organization continuously innovate, and evolve by introducing the necessary mechanisms to make that possible. To succeed, IT leaders need a combination of hard and soft skills – namely, technological and business management skills, the comfort of navigating ambiguity, along with strong communication and problem-solving abilities.

Start With a Foundation of Business and Technology Knowledge

CIOs and other IT leaders have moved away from being technology gatekeepers who enforce rules, and IT is no longer a one-stop shop for technology. Considering that technological advancements and innovation are crucial to a modern business’s strategic goals, IT leaders are becoming trusted advisors to executive leadership.

The changing role of IT leadership comes as no surprise given the rapid technological advancements in the past few years. Innovation and business goals are now inseparable. To bring an organization’s ideal technology vision to life, IT leaders must acquire a skillset that spans business management and technical insight. Background in only one or the other will not offer enough varied expertise to be an effective leader.

If you’re looking for executive leadership training, keep an eye out for university courses and programs, coaching workshops, online certification courses, and company training opportunities that will help you develop skills across technology and business.

Typically, the pathway to becoming a CIO begins on either the technology or business side, with most people adopting the other side, sometimes over the course of their careers. I started on the technology side, studying computer science, while an undergraduate, and then immediately earned a MBA to supplement that knowledge. I used formal education early on to develop both sides, and then made a point to grow those skills throughout my career, combining my technical knowledge with the business side through marketing and sales positions.

Perhaps you’ve focused on one side of the skillset spectrum for years and are hoping to develop abilities on the other side. Fortunately, it’s never too late to further your education. Start looking into options for an advanced degree or other certification that will allow you to round out your experience and map toward a leadership position.

Develop Your Soft Skills Through Listening and Communicating Well

Generally speaking, it’s common to find two “types” of individuals within the IT department: introverts who are excellent listeners, and extroverts, who are gifted in teaching and communicating. Both are highly valuable, and IT leaders need to develop abilities on both sides. If an IT professional embodies a combination of these traits altogether, that leader then becomes that much more valuable to any business.

The loudest or most talkative person in the room does not make a great leader. The leader can often be the opposite of this. The ability to clearly express ideas is important, but leaders should also be thoughtful listeners. Don’t listen just to perform the act of listening. Leaders listen to learn, understand, and hear what is really being communicated. You can absorb more and learn a great deal from colleagues and experts when you keep an open ear and mind. Listening well allows you to uncover important information that will later fuel innovation and drive decision making.

Listening to team members and encouraging their ideas shows that you value their opinions, allowing you to better support your staff and be a more dependable manager. Gaining a reputation as a good listener will also help encourage shy or nervous employees to speak up and share their ideas without you prompting them. This helps your staff grow personally while also allowing them to contribute to the overall success of the business.

The perfect complementary skill to listening is the ability to clearly communicate with others. Communication might not always be the first skill that comes to mind when thinking of IT management, but it is crucial when it comes to great leadership.

For example, recruiters and managers filling IT leadership positions should take note if candidates are sharing their knowledge. While interviewing a candidate, seek out displays of thought leadership and entrepreneurial thinking. A candidate might share blog posts highlighting their expertise on LinkedIn, a personal website, or an online column. Others may prefer participating in webinars, seminars, or company videos. Anything that displays proactive thought leadership and offers valuable lessons to readers or viewers speaks volumes about one’s credibility as a teacher and studied expert.

Leaders who can effectively communicate and share their knowledge are essential, as they are the most qualified to build up strong employees and encourage them in their career journeys. The best mentors know how to effectively communicate to create opportunities to advance employee skillsets, build stronger teams, and improve workplace relationships.

Matching technical and business management skills with the softer skills of listening and communicating well puts IT leaders on the best path to success and equips them with the ability to bring innovation to their businesses. Continuing to implement and grow these skillsets will allow you to advance in your career while encouraging employee growth and meeting your organization’s long-term goals.

Develop Your Skills at Actian

Interested in learning more about how you can further your career in technology? Visit our Careers webpage to view current open positions and discover more about our employee-first community values.

About Steve Padgett

Steve Padgett is Chief Information Officer for Actian, overseeing IT, Facilities, and Cloud Operations globally. He brings 30+ years of IT leadership, including past CIO roles at Pervasive Software, Supportkids, and Tivoli. Steve has implemented large-scale, secure infrastructures and drives continuous improvement in enterprise systems. His blog posts at Actian focus on cloud management, operational efficiency, and IT strategy. Read them for insights on modernizing organizational infrastructure.

Data Intelligence

How to Liberalize Data Access – Check out BARC’s Data Culture Survey 23

Actian Corporation

November 28, 2022

How To Liberalize Data Access And Enpower Data User Feature Image

“Data culture eats data strategy for breakfast” is a powerful saying among data & analytics managers that underlines the importance of aligning data strategy & organizational culture for operational success. Indeed, data culture is a people matter. Data becomes a high-value asset when it is shared and available to everyone in an organization.

Management Survey: 8 Data Culture Findings in Data-Driven Companies

1. Decisions are Made Based on a Mixture of Data and Gut Feeling

Following an increase in 2021, the proportion of companies making primarily data-driven decisions has remained stable this year with 50 percent stating that they generally base their decisions on a combination of data and gut feeling.

2. Data Knowledge is Essential to Data and Analytics

Almost three-quarters of respondents state that they have recognized the need to invest in ways to access, link, and understand metadata. However, some of the tools used are not very widespread yet.

3. Data Culture is Beneficial

Almost half of the companies surveyed count improved decision-making among the goals they have achieved, and more than a third have achieved continuous process improvements and cost reductions through the use of data. However, expectations are much higher and more diverse.

4. Data Literacy, Leadership, and Communication Need a Boost

According to survey participants, data leadership, data communication, and data literacy initiatives have only been launched by around 20 percent. The CxO perspective is quite different: 81 percent of CxOs claim that data literacy is already in place or planned, and 78 percent say the same for data communication.

5. Companies Seem to Focus on the Wrong Actions

The biggest reported obstacles to implementing a data culture are a lack of resources, a lack of knowledge, a lack of roles and responsibilities, and inadequate communication – but it is precisely these obstacles that are the least frequently addressed in concrete initiatives.

6. Most Companies Believe in the ‘Right to Know’ Approach

Companies today still predominantly follow the ‘need to know’ principle, which means data access is only granted on request. 59 percent of respondents see greater advantages in the more liberal ‘right to know’ approach.

7. The Conditions for the Democratization of Data Access are not yet in Place

The biggest challenges to liberalizing data access are a lack of data knowledge on the part of users and enabling simple access methods. Many of the conditions for better data access must therefore be created first.

8. True Data-Driven Companies Rely on Modern Concepts, Technologies, and Metadata

Best-in-class companies use technologies and concepts beyond ‘classic’ business intelligence tools. These include tools for metadata management (e.g., data catalogs, data intelligence platforms), tools for data virtualization, organizational concepts (e.g., data mesh), and architectural concepts and principles such as data fabric.

About Actian Corporation

Actian Life

Actian Top Workplace of 2022 by the Austin American-Statesman

Rae Coffman-Bueb

November 25, 2022

Panoramic image of the city of Austin, which recognized Actian as one of the Top Workplaces 2022

We’re thrilled to share that Actian has been recognized as a Top Workplace of 2022 by the Austin American-Statesman for the third year in a row! The Austin American-Statesman’s Top Workplaces of Greater Austin project recognizes the best places to work in the Austin metro area, based solely on employee feedback. The program considers 15 culture-drivers that are critical to the success of any organization, including factors such as alignment, execution, and connection.

At Actian, we strive to develop a workplace that fosters innovation and allows our dynamic team to thrive on creating technology for the next generation. “Employee-first” is the way we do business, and we place a huge emphasis on our people and culture. We want each employee to have the opportunity to show up as their authentic self, enabling them to do their very best work by offering a warm, welcoming, and friendly environment. It’s our goal to ensure our employees know that they always matter and that they understand the critical part they each play in making our customers and our company successful.

We do this by following several core values:

Innovation: We believe in innovation broadly across all functions. We are committed to being on the cutting edge of technology by ambitiously looking for opportunities to improve by expanding our patent portfolio, refining our approach, continuing to innovate and enhancing the products and services we offer our customers.
Teaming to Win: We are comprised of experienced, talented people who believe in the power of our team. We are devoted to leveraging the power of diverse, individual perspectives and new ideas with respectful discussion and debate, treating all with dignity and respect.
Customer Focus: We recognize that customers depend on us to conduct their business. Most have been with us for many years. We work collaboratively with our customers and prospects to deliver reliable, performant products that bring substantial value.
Decisive Action: We are bold and decisive in our actions. We make prudent, thoughtful decisions and act with clear intent and strong business judgment. We approach challenges directly, confidently, and collaboratively, without hubris or arrogance.
Candid Communications: We communicate to our investors, customers, partners, and internal teams openly and honestly. We impart accurate information, act with sincerity, building trust and establishing mutual respect.
Integrity: We are committed to working ethically and with complete integrity in all that we do and place trust in our people to act accordingly. We mean what we say and deliver on our commitments.

In addition to being named a Top Workplace, Actian has been honored with several Culture Excellence Awards, given to showcase strong values of companies that rank in the top 25% of surveyed organizations. This year, Actian has received Culture Excellence Awards in the categories of Innovation, Work-Life Flexibility, Compensation and Benefits, Leadership, Employee Appreciation, Employee Well-being and Professional Development.

We are truly honored to be recognized by our employees and would like to share our sincerest gratitude to everyone who voted!

Careers at Actian

Are you looking to join a rapidly growing company that values its employees and is transforming data management and integration? Join our team of innovative, enthusiastic employees to grow in a collaborative and welcoming environment.

Find out more about current career opportunities at: https://www.actian.com/company/careers/. Ready to apply? Click here.

About Rae Coffman-Bueb

Rae Coffman-Bueb is Director of Employee Experience at Actian, dedicated to enhancing organizational culture. With a background in People Operations, Rae has implemented global best practices that empower teams and streamline HR processes. She provides guidance on talent development, onboarding, and cross-functional collaboration. Rae's blog posts focus on employee engagement, internal communications, and HR innovations. Check them out for tips on boosting workplace satisfaction.

Actian Life

Telling a Great Data Story

Teresa Wingfield

November 23, 2022

people chatting in an office about data analytics and how to tell a great data story

What is a Data Story?

A story is a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the listener or reader. A data story can be like any story, but its narrative is focused on data insights designed to teach and motivate an audience to act.

Why Do You Need a Data Story?

In the world of data analytics, soft skills such as leadership and effective communication are just as important as hard technical skills. This is particularly true now that there’s increasing pressure to connect business value with cost in today’s economically challenged markets. Calculating the Return on Investment (ROI) for your data platform is very hard, and few can do this successfully. Thus, a data story gives you an easier way to communicate business value.

How Do You Tell a Great Data Story?

There are many things to keep in mind when creating a compelling data story. Here are my four recommendations to help you begin your data story development:

Tell the Right Data Story

A good data story includes something that is relevant or significant to your audience. The context of how data helps them do their jobs better is important. Data engineers might want more robust data pipelines and faster performance. Data scientists are most often concerned about having the right data, algorithms and data quality. Frontline workers have needs that vary across their business specialties. For example, a marketing user might want to be able to adjust a campaign more quickly with real-time insights into demand while a financial analyst might want to develop a better revenue forecast based on this same information.

Make Your Data Story Interesting

No one wants to hear the same old story. Creating a good data story means revealing something that will capture the interest of your audience. Sometimes it would inspire them to take action based on the message they are hearing. What are the ways that your data story can help uncover a new opportunity or provide a fresh insight into how to solve a challenge? Think about the stories that have stood out to you. Were there any that inspired you to think about things differently? To research and learn more about something? To do something? When possible, include how data insights from real-time analytics can help improve specific metrics or meet goals that your audience is responsible for.

Show and Tell

Just sharing the story isn’t enough. How can you present your data story in a way that engages your audience in a way that they can take something away with them? There’s a saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. This rings true when you are trying to convey an idea quickly and effectively. So be sure to use the visualizations that are available in your data analytics tool in conjunction with your own representations.

Plan for a Sequel

Like an enduring story that we remember for a long time – we sometimes anticipate what’s going to happen next. The data story shouldn’t just end after your presentation. You need the data story to continue by highlighting what actions you want your audience to take after hearing it. You can suggest ways to turn insights into action, or better yet, ask your audience about their ideas and follow up after your meeting to gauge the impact your data story has had on the business.

How Can I Strengthen My Data Story?

The best data stories are built around real-time data analytics. Improve your data story with the Actian Data Platform with real-time insights in a single solution for data integration, data management and data analytics.

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Vector 6.3 Delivers Easier Administration for Data Analytics

Automatic Diagnostic Log Rotation Ensures Reliable Archives

Query Result Caching – Spill to Disk Eliminates Waiting for Available Memory

Smart Min-Max Indexing Improves Memory Management

Shareable DBA User Defined Functions (UDFs) Increase Developer Productivity

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Navigate Your Analytics Journey Better With Vector

About Teresa Wingfield

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The Benefits of Data in the Insurance Industry

Benefit 1: Better Customer Retention

Benefit 2: More Accurate Risk Assessment

Benefit 3: Fraud Reduction

Benefit 4: More Relevant Product/Service Innovation

Benefit 5: Process Automation

Benefit 6: Personalized Customer Paths

About Actian Corporation

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The Benefits of Modernizing Cloud Migration

About Teresa Wingfield

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BARC Data Culture Survey 23 – Data-Driven Trends

Data-Driven Decision-Making vs. Gut Feeling

The Most Data-Driven Departments of a Company

Data-Driven Decision Support Should be at All Levels of the Company

About Actian Corporation

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Moving Your Data Warehouse to a Modern Cloud Data Platform

Cloud Modernization

Data Platform Modernization

Accelerate Modernization With the Actian Data Platform

About Teresa Wingfield

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Data Silos Suck. Here’s How to Break Them Down.

The Problems in the Silo

Break Down Data Silos

Benefits of Effective Data Platform Solutions

About Teresa Wingfield

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