Data Catalog Template: 7 Game-Changing Benefits of Adoption

This is part of Solutions Review’s Premium Content Series, a collection of contributed columns written by industry experts in maturing software categories. In this submission, Infragistics Product Manager Casey McGuigan offers a data catalog template and key benefits of adoption.

During the stone age of data management, data was printed out and put into a file folder for manual analysis. Then, newer software platforms like Microsoft Excel allowed users to conduct basic data manipulation and analysis. However, these methods were simplistic, disorganized, and unavailable to large groups of users. That is where the best data catalogs come in. They are a vital asset in modern data management platforms and serve as a centralized repository for business data.

Data catalogs allow organizations to discover, curate, categorize, and share data visualizations, data sets, and analytical models to drive better decisions and arrive at improved outcomes. They act as a central location for the data that matters, so teams can make informed decisions through user interface dashboards from a single source of truth.

If an organization lacks a data catalog, team members might waste weeks trying to find, understand and validate data, and then determine the meaning and business logic behind it. With the help of a data catalog, all team members can easily understand these defined, meaningful, and searchable assets which can accelerate the time to insights.

The best data catalog helps make your organization more data-driven. It should align your organization’s priorities, data strategy, and project and empower your users to get the most out of your data and make smarter decisions at the point of impact.

Organizations that are already leveraging data catalogs experience a significant increase in the speed and quality of data access, enabling data-driven decisions. Armed with data insights, companies can increase profitability, improve employee engagement and customer relationships, and identify opportunities for growth.

Data Catalog Template: 7 Game-Changing Benefits of Adoption

For organizations that are struggling with data adoption and management, the benefits of a data catalog are a game-changer. Modern data catalogs collect metadata from a wide variety of data stores, including data lakes, data warehouses, NoSQL databases, and cloud object storage.

The more advanced digital workplace platforms incorporate data catalog functionality to provide a single source of trusted information. When evaluating data catalogs, choose one that offers flexible searching and filtering options, is able to harvest technical metadata from a variety of connected data assets, is automated with AI and machine learning, and offers metadata curation.

A data catalog is a fundamental step toward structuring data in a logical and resourceful manner. It can prove to be an important asset for any organization as it can help:

1. Create a Reservoir for Data: Including information on the quality, structure, usage, and business definitions of the data. It also offers access to the lineage, source, and modifications to the data.
2. Provide a Unified View: Data is neatly organized, indexed, and kept ready for use, fostering collaboration among a wide range of users, including business and technical users.
3. Enhance Data Accessibility: Data across the organization becomes searchable and easily accessible, allowing you to easily find the right data you need and spend less time searching for it and more time analyzing it.
4. Ensure Accurate Data: And consistent across the datasphere by updating itself automatically and frequently.
5. Cultivate a Data-Driven Culture: An organizational data-driven culture brings transparency to the whole enterprise and helps provide easily consumable insights and results in optimized business performance.
6. Improve Data Analysis: Perhaps the greatest value of data catalogs is in its impact on data analysis, providing the ability to extract insights from data and guide better and smarter business decisions.
7. Reduce Costs: With the right data catalog, you can reduce the time to insights. A data catalog is an investment with real costs, but when used to drive the decision-making process, it can save money in the long run and help increase profits.

Conclusion

Data is a valuable asset but it’s full potential is only unlocked when users are able to understand it and transform it into meaningful information. Ultimately, a business-ready data catalog should provide users with easily accessible, high-quality data to develop meaningful business insights, improve decision-making, derive value, and gain a competitive edge. For organizations that want to succeed in data-driven world, a data catalog is a must-have.