The importance of data-sharing

Data has become a critical asset to the success of any organisation in today’s digital landscape. But having it is one thing. Extracting relevant insights is something else entirely. To this end, data-sharing has emerged as a key enabler to unlock business value.

 Data‐sharing is described as the practice of making research data available to other investigators or institutions for the purposes of social scientific research. Data‐sharing can occur through informal data exchange among researchers, and formal data exchange through data archives and repositories.

Evolving role

The concept of data-sharing originated on the research side at universities and other institutions of higher learning where academics made their data available to one another. Meanwhile, businesses struggled with implementing data-sharing practices for years thanks in no small part to how they have traditionally managed their data.

Data was often departmentalised and restricted within organisational silos. The emphasis was on protecting and not sharing data within the business. Each department owned its own data. For instance, human resources oversaw salaries and marketing was responsible for customer data. Of course, there were (and still are) security considerations at play to frame this culture of data ownership.

However, even within legal parameters and the emergence of things like the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there is potential to embrace data-sharing practices. This has become even more important with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, data-sharing is a global necessity. Collaboration between countries has happened at a rate and scale never seen before as the world unifies in combating this virus.

Growing effectiveness

Research shows that organisations have realised the importance of creating synergies between building a data-driven business and leading digital transformation. In that regard, data-sharing has resulted in data and analytics teams becoming more effective and showing demonstrable, verifiable value to stakeholders.

In this regard, those businesses that promote and succeed in embracing data-sharing will outperform their competitors on most value metrics.

Change management

To do so requires a shift in approach that sees the business looking to share data wherever it can do so, however within the confines of regulatory restrictions. Part of this entails establishing trust-based mechanisms. Whether it is inter-department or sharing data with key external partners, the organisation must ensure the required confidentiality agreements, governance, and legal frameworks are in place.

From there, the data-sharing environment must be prepared. Considerations here include going with the cloud-based route to enable easier sharing of volume data, implementing security, and taking the opportunity to best utilise the various data layers such as an enterprise data lake, enterprise data warehouse, and others.

Just as with many data type projects, the company must prioritise use cases for data-sharing. These can be categorised according to how easy they are to implement, and the value add they can bring to the organisation. Of course, if data-sharing is to be effective, training employees on the processes to follow and improving their level of data literacy must be prioritised.

Linking data-sharing to business key performance indicators is instrumental to measure the success of this approach. This can encompass the customer experience, cost optimisation, revenue, generation, and even compliance.

Throughout this, the emphasis must be on sharing the right data with the right stakeholders. Data is a powerful asset that can rapidly transform the operating environment not just at a business level, but an industry one.