{"id":52734,"date":"2021-10-22T12:55:24","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T11:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/?p=52734"},"modified":"2021-10-22T12:55:24","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T11:55:24","slug":"unify-your-data-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/cross-industry\/2021\/10\/22\/unify-your-data-architecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Empower employees by unifying your analytics and data architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"
We hear all the time how data is our most valuable asset in business. However, you can only truly recognise its value once you connect and manage your data in a cohesive fashion. What happens when you enable a digital feedback loop within your organisation, your data and analytics, and the intelligence it creates? The foundations for a successful digital modernisation.<\/p>\n
I believe that when you harness the streams of data being created, tie this to your existing data and apply AI to it, you enable better decision making and transformative processes. You will:<\/p>\n
You can see success in the way Marks and Spencer<\/a> use their data. They own every part of their supply chain and collect data from across all touchpoints. They needed an agile solution that would scale, store and analyse their massive amounts of data. By replacing their on-premise data warehouse with Microsoft Azure-based data platform built around Azure Synapses Analytics, they gave teams access to valuable data they didn’t have before.<\/p>\n \u201cBy democratising access, we\u2019re allowing more people to have ideas, and these ideas add incremental value to the business. Our retail support team is already reshaping how we report stock and stock loss to managers. Since they work closest to the retail side of the business, they know exactly how to consolidate and present information in ways that lead to real improvements, \u201d says Aaronpal Dhanda, Head of Data Technology.<\/p>\n Most leaders agree that provisioning an end-to-end analytics platform is not a simple task. They need to make sure they can trust their data, that they can get deeper insights from it and it is bias-free. And, they need to ensure compliance along every step of the analytics journey.<\/p>\n All while trying to create agility and more rapid decision making by democratising data and tools to everyone and providing the digital upskilling they need to do this effectively.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n More and more tools, systems and things become connected. As a result, companies must figure out how to manage and analyse new classes of data. Additionally, different lines of businesses see different values in data and analytics.<\/p>\n And this is what creates the paradox of analytics. Although analytics systems are intended to be centralised to provide \u201cthe single version of truth\u201d, the more we apply new technology to integrate and analyse data in different ways, the more silos we can recreate<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Sometimes, through hard work to dissolve operational data silos we end up creating more. And not just data silos, but siloed teams and people. When we implement new technology for specific types of data, we are creating a more fractured approach to data integration. Then, this must be put back into the overall platform during the analytics lifestyle.<\/p>\n This approach is often sold as a centralised solution. But it is siloed architectures that creates siloed data teams. As a result, data governance becomes extremely difficult to accomplish. All counter to our objective to enable deeper analytics collaboration between teams.<\/p>\n Every organisation has experts in both data and analytics technology. When they collaborate over data with the same efficiency they do for productivity applications, their expertise is utilised across team and organisational boundaries.\u200b<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe reality of data<\/h2>\n
\nAs you can see, you can bring so much value to your organisation when you connect and manage your data properly. However, true modernisation comes by innovating the processes that run your business. This is where data realities begin to hit both IT and business leaders.<\/p>\nThe analytics paradox<\/h2>\n
Bring your vision to life with analytics<\/h2>\n