The global pandemic changed the way people work, communicate, shop, and enjoy free time. The internet not only became the platform that underpinned this transformation but facilitated the capture of data from every click, search, or transaction from any device attached to it. Organizations use the information to attract and retain customers, streamline processes, or introduce agility and flexibility to their strategic visions.
After employees, data is your most important resource. How do you gather, validate, analyze, store, archive, backup, retrieve and delete data in a way that economically and strategically makes sense?
What is Enterprise Data Management?
Digital transformation has become more popular since the pandemic. Digital transformation means moving from manual or paper-based processes to streamlined transactions that deliver services to a worldwide market based on cloud and Internet technology. When performed successfully, business transformation allows businesses to pivot with agility based upon data analysis of customer trends and wants.
Most organizations feel that over 30% of their data is stale or inaccurate, according to a 2019 Experian study. Data that you cannot trust places you at reputational and regulatory risk.
Enterprise Data Management (EDM) is:
- The capability to acquire, integrate, and analyze vast amounts of data to support decisions on the governance, creation and delivery of products or how staff perform tasks.
- The movement to cloud-based technologies, especially data lake storage, allows data acquisition from any internal application or service and any Internet-based activity (mobile, IoT, video, etc.).
- The transformation of corporate data into a seamless flow of information via the removal of disparate data silos and, instead, centralizing data for use by any product or workstream.
- The creation and sharing of information with partners or customers in a secure and encrypted fashion.
- The underpinning for how every employee or partner works together to meet their own and the organization’s visions of success by helping to create assurance, confidence and trust in all data assets.
The outcome of EDM is a trusted data lineage traceable through the lifecycle of data origins, destinations, consumption, and maintenance. Tracking data lineage will provide your organization with visibility into how data moves through your systems, allowing you to optimize organizational decision-making and the cost of data management.
Benefits of Enterprise Data Management
Transitioning from typical data silos to a joint data management facility and process is challenging. Still, these challenges pale in comparison to the benefits seen by those that have successfully adopted EDM:
- Creating trusted data for any organizational purpose.
- Making data highly accessible, consistent and available for data-driven analysis and decision.
- Easing the burden of data security and compliance by having a single-defined data management location and process.
- Streamlining customer service processes or other organization tasks as data is from a trusted source and agreed format, regardless of use.
- Enabling the security of data by using cloud-based storage and encryption tools.
- Reducing the business costs of storing data or performing data transactions.
- Building a scalable data architecture that allows your system to adapt quickly to changes.
Master Data Management vs. Enterprise Data Management
EDM is the umbrella practice that covers the entire data management lifecycle. Underneath this umbrella is the data practices of:
- Data security.
- Reference data management via catalogs and metadata.
- Transaction business rules for data.
- Organization training on data management and responsibilities.
- Governance of data practices.
- Data reporting guidance.
- Data usage and maintenance.
- Data recovery.
- Data deletion and destruction.
- Data integration via master data management for digital business.
The last point is significant. The pandemic, as mentioned, has changed the way people do things by moving their activities to the Internet. Master Data Management (MDM) defines the enterprise architecture and practices to best use all data sourced from the Internet. Every comment above that applies to enterprise data management applies to MDM, but for just the digital components. enterprise data management is all data: digital, manual, paper-based, etc. The benefits of master data management are the creation and management of practices that will transform your organization into a digital product delivery service.
Actian and the Data Intelligence Platform
Actian Data Intelligence Platform is purpose-built to help organizations unify, manage, and understand their data across hybrid environments. It brings together metadata management, governance, lineage, quality monitoring, and automation in a single platform. This enables teams to see where data comes from, how it’s used, and whether it meets internal and external requirements.
Through its centralized interface, Actian supports real-time insight into data structures and flows, making it easier to apply policies, resolve issues, and collaborate across departments. The platform also helps connect data to business context, enabling teams to use data more effectively and responsibly. Actian’s platform is designed to scale with evolving data ecosystems, supporting consistent, intelligent, and secure data use across the enterprise. Request your personalized demo.
