Enterprise Data Strategy, what is it?

In my last post I touched briefly on why organisations need to have an enterprise data strategy in place, this post will look at what an enterprise data strategy is and to some extent what it isn’t.

So, what is an enterprise data strategy?

Many organisations labour under the misconception that a data strategy is all about technology, and how that technology can help them achieve their goals. While there is no doubt that an enterprise data strategy is closely supported by technological capabilities, the ability to understand and extract value from data is not solely about IT. A properly constructed enterprise data strategy is not just about the IT platforms that an organisation deploys, it’s about the unification of business and IT perspectives regarding data and the enterprise-wide alignment of vision and guidance on exploiting that data as a valuable business asset.

Organisations, who try to solve their data issues by layering new technologies over the top of out-of-date core infrastructures without understanding the underlying data, only succeed in increasing the complexity of their already complex environments as well incurring significant costs in the process and introducing increased and unnecessary levels of risk into their business. As I mentioned in my previous post, despite the billions of pounds that have been invested into IT infrastructures in order to correctly manage and exploit value from their data, many organisations are still struggling to fully deploy those solutions and extract the business benefits which those investments promised.

Data is now an organisation’s most valuable business asset and therefore it can no longer be thought of as another business entity that simply needs to be managed, data must now be measured in economic terms and its value expressed in the language of finance and not of IT. In order to drive this change in attitude an effective enterprise data strategy should always start with the business, because to be useful in a business context, data must address an organisation’s specific business needs, assist them in reaching their strategic goals, and generate ‘real’ value. Therefore, alignment to the overall business strategy is the key in constructing an enterprise data strategy that can deliver the expectations placed upon it

An enterprise data strategy is the comprehensive vision and road map that all organisations need if they are to fully understand, correctly manage and successfully exploit their data to its full potential. It should describe a set of choices and decisions that together, chart a high-level course of action to achieve the business goals, provide clear direction for the IT strategy as well as act as a guiding force for all the domain-specific strategies such as governance, security, quality and architecture that make up the wider enterprise data ecosystem.

A correctly constructed enterprise data strategy ensures that all data initiatives will follow a common method and structure that is perfectly aligned to the needs of the business. This standard model enables efficient and effective communication throughout the organisation for justifying, defining, designing, deploying and managing all solutions that leverage data in one way or another.

In my final post on this subject I’ll cover what a well thought out and correctly aligned enterprise data strategy can deliver.