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Data management has become crucial for all businesses to stay competitive. Success in any business calls for the correct planning, leaders, skill-sets, and tools.

Today, business data volume has escalated to unprecedented levels, making data management tools imperative for businesses to manage large data volumes. A recent study shows that businesses that make decisions based on data management tools are 58 percent more likely to exceed their revenue goals than firms without such tools.

It has also become challenging for businesses to run their operations efficiently without mastering the art of handling the correct data at the right time and making the best use of the data they have with them. Many businesses are with this deficit, putting them at difficulty finding, understanding, and trusting their data. And the result is that they cannot reduce cost, improve efficiency and see new growth areas.

Today, data plays a significant role in business operations. Without data management, there cannot be a clear strategy for businesses. A data catalog helps enterprises to manage data effectively and make their business more productive.

What is a Data Catalogue?

A data catalog provides businesses with a centralized and secure resource to access trusted data and know where datasets come from and host. The catalog comes with embedded data governance and data privacy capabilities to empower businesses with the requisite tools for managing data efficiently.

Why is Trusted Data Important?

With an enterprise data catalog, you can access trusted and compliant data across the enterprise. It breaks down legacy data silos and provides clear visibility into all data across the firm, speeding up business processes. Furthermore, it supports classification, profiling, certification, quality, lineage, and data management policy. As such, businesses can better understand and trust data while protecting data from misuse.

The tool eliminates the need to crawl through bulky data sets to locate the correct data and access trusted data in a minimal time. As such, it instills confidence and trust in using data. Businesses can leverage the trusted data insights to make decisions. It also helps companies to formulate a data-driven strategy.

Although a data catalog can help you to find the correct data quickly, it is only a piece of the full benefits. The most crucial thing it offers is trust in data. Businesses can regard data as valuable only when it is trusted. If they do not trust the data, they cannot make business decisions confidently, regardless of the ease they can find.

 Data should be accurate and accessible with the right tools, conforming to the data policies. Trusted data is of high quality and vetted as accurate and complete.

It is the reason behind businesses needing an enterprise data catalog with embedded and comprehensive data governance capabilities. By carefully choosing the right datasets that go into the data catalog, businesses can ensure that only accurate, complete, and trustworthy data is made available.

What are the Benefits of a Data Catalog?

A data catalog with embedded data governance capability is a critical tool for businesses to stay productive and efficient. It enables data management and ensures that the data is consistent, secure, and organized apart from conforming to the relevant policies. Moreover, a data catalog reduces third-party data spend and streamlines reporting across the enterprise. Businesses can stay automated and make sound business decisions using trusted data.

With consolidated data and insights, businesses can improve customer acquisition, innovate products and optimize prices, pushing up revenues.

Strong data governance is another benefit of a data catalog that promotes operational efficiency, supply chain optimization, marketing efficiency, and sales effectiveness.

A data catalog enables businesses to figure out which data is delivering value. It also maximizes data-driven decisions across the enterprise, provides business context around the data. With such a catalog, businesses can better understand data and quickly determine the firm’s available and relevant data.

It enables the effective use of data to make impactful business decisions. The access to trusted data speeds up the decision-making process, allowing businesses to adapt to the prevailing market trends to provide better customer value.

How Can Employees Put a Data Catalog to Best Use?

Different categories of employees can use a data catalog differently. For example, an analyst can use a data catalog to find, evaluate and collaborate with trusted data. It helps him to generate insights and reports. Moreover, it also helps the analyst save time searching for the necessary data, enabling him to spend more time in productive work rather than searching for data.

Likewise, a data scientist can use a data catalog to search trusted and build models. With data availability in a centralized location, he can quickly find the necessary data, allowing him to spend more time building models rather than searching for data.

A data steward can use a data catalog to figure out the data that is available across the enterprise in a similar manner. With a data catalog, he can organize information in terms of data quality, ownership, location, process, policies, and access privileges. Moreover, it can also help him to figure out which data he should focus on for managing. With a data catalog, he can also certify the catalog’s data assets that the firm can trust.

The Must-Have Capabilities of a Data Catalogue

A smart data catalog should have a slew of must-have capabilities to qualify for wide enterprise use. It should bear in-built data governance, data privacy, and security capabilities that entail understanding and trust in data.

It is identifying and categorizing data capabilities that are not enough. It should also provide the context around the data to enable the business to understand whether the data is correct.

Ensure that the data in the catalog is trusted. Check whether it has curated metadata from trusted sources. Businesses cannot use data if it is not sourced from trusted origins. They should get the confidence that they can trust the data.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive landscape, no business can afford to ignore the need for a data catalog. It improves competitiveness and mitigates businesses’ risks by enabling easy access to trusted data while maintaining security and privacy. With such a catalog, companies can use data in innovative ways.