“You know a lot about your customers. You have all the data,” a CIO of a major banking organisation told peers at an industry gathering. However, she went on to add that, as the data isn’t joined-up, organisations are unable to utilise the information and draw useful insights.
Underutilised data prevents organisations from being effective, and therefore leaves them unable to innovate. A data engineering approach can transform data into insight and can also transform an organisation’s operations.
The new normal
COVID-19 led to unusually high growth in 2020 but, as is well documented, the technology-led change to ways of working, living and business operations will remain in place beyond the pandemic. This means that the data growth seen in 2020 will become the new normal. “The amount of digital data created over the next five years will be greater than twice the amount of data created since the advent of digital storage,” says Dave Reinsel, Senior VP at technology analysts, IDC, and author of the IDC Global DataSphere report. This report states that data will experience a compound annual growth of 23% for the period 2020 to 2025. Driving this growth is the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and increased use of cloud computing.
Data enables digital resiliency
With data levels increasing, financial services, government and other vertical markets will need to engineer a strong data strategy. The IDC report notes that data is “crucial to any organisation’s efforts to establish digital resiliency – the ability for an organisation to rapidly adapt to business disruptions by leveraging digital capabilities.” This enables them to restore business operations but also to capitalise on the changed conditions. “Data enables digital resiliency because business is dependent on data.”