At the recent A-Team Data Management Summit we held a giveaway competition for the chance to win an independent bookstore voucher – £100 to Daunt Books in London, or $100 to Strand Book store in NYC.
We asked data management professionals attending the event to give their biggest data quality or matching challenge. Below you can find a summary of all the most popular answers together with a few quotes from the Datactics team along the way…
Problem #1 – Cooperation: Business & Data Need To Get Along
The main recurring theme was that cooperation between business and data teams is vital for requirements to be ready and rapid to deploy.
Matt Flenley, Marketing Manager, commented, “Communication is key in all lines of business, and in data it’s no different. We’ve found that smoothing the channel of communication between business users who know what the data should look like and be used for, and technical teams who are often responsible for securing and protecting it, is often best achieved by giving those business users access to a lo-code platform that doesn’t require coding knowledge.”
Problem #2 – Resources: I Need More Power, Mr Scott!
Resources was a major issue that kept coming up. Whether it’s in defining rules, or fixing breaks, another common theme was the sheer amount of human resource needed to fix the problems systems are surfacing.
CTO Alex Brown, said, “The demand for bulk-fixing data quality problems is something we’re seeing more and more. Machine Learning is definitely making this easier from the perspective of recommending the best way to fix data, enabling businesses to know where and when to target the resources they have available at their disposal.”
Problem #3 – Standardization: The Problem With Standards These Days
Standardization irked quite a few people, whether because of the lack of it, the process of it, or having to reconfigure internal systems to meet external vendors’ demands. Indeed, this is a common point on most data management agenda as firms and professionals try and address the question of standards from all perspectives.
“Rapidly configuring data to different standards is one of those data problems that people have become accustomed to existing. Something that’s hard or impossible to change” chipped in CEO Stuart Harvey. “This really comes across as firms try to speed up their data management processes. This is one reason why we’ve focused on the end-user of the software throughout our software development journey.”
Problem #4 – Responsibility: Who Owns This Mess, Anyway?
Lastly, we saw the issue of ownership and accountability raise its head.
“Even in today’s tech-enabled age, if people don’t have a structure where stewardship and ownership are addressed, it’ll slow down any data management strategy” added Client Services Head, Luca Rovesti. “The answers to the competition demonstrate that winning the case for data quality is more than just a choice of the right software vendor. A ‘proof of concept’ can therefore be seen to be as much about the choice of software as showcasing a maturing data culture, where business users are equipped with a platform for fixing data instead of it always being a problem they can’t solve.”
Thanks to all those who entered, and to A-Team Group for making it easy for attendees to find the contests and submit their entries.
ICYMI: Our Head of Sales, Kieran Seaward delivered a keynote entitled ‘A Data-driven restart’ at the Data Management Summit USA Virtual. If you missed the keynote, check it out here.
