One of the first criteria to assess the capacity of a company to exploit and enhance its data is to check if the company has put in place the skills to exploit this data and has clarified its classification of trades Chief Data Officer ), Data Protection Officer (DPO), Data scientist, Data Manager, Project Manager, etc.
Regarding data experts already in place, such as those in Business Intelligence (Analytics), they will also have to evolve because they often lack control over exchanges. For functional experts (SAP type) it is even more complex because they are often focused on certain visions and certain software, whereas on the contrary, for certain quality services, in highly regulated sectors such as health, these services can integrate a very great mastery of the data. With the roadmap PowerPoint you can have the best choices there.
The Basic Making
Being an architect ourselves, we know that my profession too must be strengthened. Because the architect touches on four areas: business (processes and functions), applications, infrastructure and data, which is in fact often forgotten. It is a component of the profession to be strengthened for us too, with an orientation through existing, external data, and towards new uses of data. Even if the first work on data started more than twenty years ago, the spread of this approach to all participants in architectural work remains to be evangelized.
The actors of the data centric company speak a common language
A common vocabulary is essential. For example “Is a truck a vehicle like any other?” What is a contract? What is a product? Who are our customers? Definitions are hardly ever shared within the company. It therefore becomes impossible even to write a specification and we are not talking about automated exchanges or Artificial Intelligence. Agreeing on vocabulary solves this problem.
A repository of everyone’s responsibilities makes it possible to clarify the “who does what”
Establishing roles and responsibilities with regard to data makes it possible to clarify vis-à-vis the business which data can be used in complete security. The key is to respond to three challenges not necessarily linked to IT:
- Improving the quality of data (or identifying the means to achieve sufficient quality for each business need) by empowering data owners and data stewards.
- Security requirements (RSSI and Risk / GDPR side).
- Ethics in the use of data. For example, if the new generations easily give their data for applications like Tinder or FaceApp, is this a reason to track down all their uses and use them in different contexts, for a recruitment, a competition?
Without co-construction, no salvation
The increase in the use of data is also changing the organization of companies. Between similarities or convergences there are also many confusions between the fields of data, digital, and IS architecture. In fact, all of these areas need to work in co-construction rather than dividing roles and responsibilities. IT skills are then to help the business model, choose the right data but the business must remain in control of the data and uses.