What is a data island? Why is there still a data island in 2022?

What is a data island ？

data silos （ It is often called information island ） It's a dataset that only one group of people can easily access . That means it's hard for others to get this information , Or worse , They can't access it at all .

for example , The marketing team has a list of people downloaded from the company's website , This list contains valuable information , Including key decision makers 、 Phone number and email address , These data can benefit the sales team , But other teams can't access it , Because it's not shared , This kind of isolated island may cause the company to miss many potential opportunities .

Data islands can be accidental , It is also possible to create on purpose . Usually , With the development of the organization , Departments have more control over their own data architecture , This is when data islands appear .

What's wrong with the data island ？

therefore , Data islands may bring various problems to enterprises in all walks of life , Here are some reasons why data silos affect organizations ：

It can lead to data duplication . When data islands are prevalent , The Department began to collect multiple sets of data , It's a waste of time and money , And it means that information will soon become inaccurate . This means that the enterprise will make the wrong decision . Inaccurate or incomplete data can lead to poor business decisions , Employees only believe that the accuracy of the company's decision-making is only 50%. Imagine , If this number can be increased , How efficient the enterprise will be .

It can lead to low morale . When the department saves data in an island , It can lead to a poor relationship between the team and frustrated employees . Some workers may feel powerless because they can't get the information they need to complete their work . It is estimated that , Due to isolated communication , Some businesses may lose value every year 150 Million dollar working hours .

It can lead to inconsistent customer messaging . If a department has a set of data , And another department has another set of data , This may lead to unstable customer experience and mixed information .

It may be unsafe . Many data islands can be found in Excel The spreadsheet 、Google Documents even U Found on disk . This may not comply with your company's data protection policy , This increases the risk of data leakage and information falling into the wrong hands .

When data islands are not a bad thing ？

You may want to know if data silos have any advantages in the enterprise . Usually , Data islands do more harm than good . however , In some cases, they may be beneficial , for example , If the department needs to control confidential information .

Take your accounting team as an example . The team securely archives employee bank details and other sensitive information such as address and social security number. This information does not need to be provided to others .

however , When shared data is valuable and risks can be safely avoided , We need to break the data island .

Why is it difficult to get rid of data islands

The main reason why it is so difficult to get rid of the data island is usually attributed to ：“ We've always done this .”

When data islands become the norm in your organization , Adapting to a new way of information sharing can be challenging , Because departments have been able to access data sets individually in this way for the past few years or even decades .

Some departments can also see themselves as part of a specific dataset “ gatekeeper ”, And feel nervous when other teams in the organization can view and edit them .

The way out of data island

that , How can we solve the problem of data islands in the workplace ？ If you want to break the situation of data island , You can use the following methods ：

Know all the data . The first thing you need to do is look at all the information you have in your business , Who owns it , Where is it stored , Who can access it ？ This will help you understand the scope of the problem .

Focus on protecting sensitive data . Make sure you know what sensitive data your data consumers are accessing , Make sure your security policy is very clear about sensitive data （ for example , Which teams can access data in clear text , Which teams can only access data after it is masked or hashed ）.

Create your IT The security policy . Creating reliable security policies will help departments understand how they need to deal with their production 、 Data used and processed , This will help your data engineering team implement the new data architecture .

Encourage communication . Encouraging departments to talk to each other can help your company understand which data sets can be used , You can do this through regular meetings or using chat software such as Tencent meetings .

Introduce cultural change . As we mentioned earlier , Many data islands arise because people don't know more information , Changing the company's culture and emphasizing transparency and cooperation helps employees collaborate .

Tool selection

For the choice of tools , Xiaobian recommends an analysis tool that can effectively solve the data island , It is intellectual analysis . Smart analytics is a new generation of cloud data analysis platform , Provide a data portal 、 The app store 、Excel Fusion analysis 、MPP Cache and other powerful features , Help yourself 、 Quickly build data analysis applications , Unleash data productivity , Promote digital operation of enterprises . Intelligent analysis summarizes the data analysis process as data connection 、 Data preparation 、 Data analysis 、 Four processes of data sharing ：

Data connection ： Can be connected to a variety of databases , Or with Excel Import in the format of .

Data preparation ： Conventional data processing operations, such as multiple data table Association 、 Remove unnecessary lines 、 Null and outlier handling 、 Do a second calculation 、 Derive new analysis dimensions 、 Analysis index, etc . Data preparation process the data in the data connection , Then output to the data analysis of the next process .

Data analysis ： For the prepared data , Conduct fixed format report 、 Flexible data exploration 、 Analysis, visual presentation and other analysis .

Data sharing ： Publish the report to the data portal and share it with other users , Suitable for enterprise use , Support data access control , You can control the permissions of each account , It can also realize data isolation for each account , This is the strongest weapon to solve the problem of data island .