Every business relies on data and data management allows businesses to better organize and access the information gathered across a wide range of software solutions. Most modern businesses recognize the value of data and for small businesses, this often means relying on reports generated within the individual software platforms they use for daily operations. However, there comes a time when unifying this data in a central, standardized source is desirable.

Most companies are eager to apply advanced analytics and machine learning to generate insights from data at scale. Yet they are also struggling to modernize their data ecosystems. Too often, data is stored all over the place in legacy systems.

Whether it is due to acquisition or the inconsistent deployment of technologies across an enterprise, it is not uncommon for an organization to have disparate systems managing similar functions in different parts of the organization. Unfortunately, this disparity is a significant obstacle to leveraging scale and planning supply chain activity, while considering the broader organization. Lack of resources and technology know-how exacerbate this problem.

In a modern business environment, virtually every piece of software collects data. These include accounting software, customer relationship management software, point of sale software, credit card processing software and more. These systems feed a wide variety of data into the business, including customer data, financial data and more.

In a survey of data management decision-makers, nearly 80% cited a lack of data cataloging as a top challenge. Almost 75% saw a lack of data observability as a problem.

As the number of business software platforms proliferate, so too does a business’s ability to gather data and employ data analytics to derive key insights from it. However, organizing that data in a centralized system can sometimes be challenging. Developing a data management strategy is a must for businesses that want to maintain a competitive advantage and improve both customer-facing and internal elements of business operations.

Data that’s out of sight doesn’t generate value for your organization. That’s why it’s so important to bring data out of the darkness and make it more visible and usable. 

At the end of the day, content needs to be findable and, that happens with a strong, standards-based taxonomy. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies and associated rule bases for machine-assisted indexing.

Melody K. Smith

Data Harmony is an award-winning semantic suite that leverages explainable AI.

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the intelligence and the technology behind world-class explainable AI solutions.