CONSULTING SERVICES
Data Catalogue Accelerator
Quickly start disentangling your data flows, by prototyping a data catalogue with a minimum of cost and complexity.
Why your business needs a data catalogue
Your business like many others, is probably striving for increased data value in the form of better insights, increased automation, digitised business models, artificial intelligence or even entirely new data products.
To achieve these data-driven outcomes, you need to control how data moves into, through, and around your business. But it’s impossible to achieve that control if you can’t see or understand the data flows in your business.
DATA CATALOGUE ACCELERATOR BENEFITS
The outcomes you can expect
Visualise
See in simple yet powerful visuals, exactly how data should be flowing through your business.
Understand
Know what data your business has, where it is, how it got there and what it’s for.
Achieve
Get greater value from your data, by eliminating data siloes and streamlining data flows.
Our data catalogue accelerator
What your business needs, is a data catalogue. But it can be hard to get a data catalogue started if your technology budget is limited, or if your data people are already overwhelmed.
The key is to get your data catalogue started with a prototype, which rapidly and inexpensively provides you with the essential ‘data stock-take’ you need to take control of your data flows, but in a way that uses the tools you already have and isn’t prohibitively expensive, time-consuming, or complex.
How the data catalogue accelerator works
We gather knowledge and information from your IT and business data SMEs, to consolidate everything your business knows (or thinks it knows) about your data landscape. We merge that intel with query-based facts about what data exists in which systems, then we analyse all that to produce clear, compelling visuals about what data your business has, where it is, how it got there, and where it goes.
We’re the big picture specialists for making the complex, simple.
- We’ll eliminate any confusion about what data your business has, and how your data flows through your business.
- You’ll have the analysis and presentation materials to communicate a clear and credible view of your business’s data landscape.
- You’ll have the compelling content required to bring everyone together in support of your plans for improving your business’s data operations.
- You’ll quickly build the initial momentum required to not only unlock some data ‘quick wins’, but also create a prototype data catalogue which can be evolved into a more sophisticated capability when the time is right.
Client Comments
Why use our data catalogue accelerator?
It’s much faster
Initial outputs can be delivered in as little as just two weeks.
It’s less expensive
By using common tools that your business is already familiar with, there’s no requirement for additional software or training.
It’s highly effective
Through accurate and engaging visual analysis, people at all levels see and understand how data flows through your business, and embrace changes necessary to ‘re-wire’ parts of your data landscape and achieve your business’s data goals.
It’s completely scalable
The content and format of your prototype data catalogue can be easily transposed into any specialised data cataloguing platform, if and when your business is ready.
The valuable outcomes we create
- Confusion around your business’s data flows is replaced with a clear view of your business’s entire data landscape.
- People are finally able to share productive conversations about your business’s data, because they can see what data there is, where it is, and where it came from.
- Business projects are no longer held up by difficult questions about how to safely make changes to data flows.
- Data architecture goes from specialist IT subject, to common business knowledge.
Learn more about our data cataloguing accelerator
Want to know more? Let us share with you some real-life examples of prototype data catalogues that we’ve built for our previous clients.
Previous data catalogue accelerator clients
What you get from our data catalogue accelerator
- A library of visual analysis including conceptual data models, data lineage diagrams, and data flow diagrams.
- A prototype data catalogue, documented as an inventory of data subjects, standards and metadata.
- New knowledge and skills transferred to your team members, so that they can continue to develop your prototype data catalogue.
- Confusion replaced by clarity – a clear view of your business’s entire data landscape.
- People sharing productive conversations about your business’s data, because they can see what data there is, where it is, and where it came from.
- Business projects no longer held up by difficult questions about how to safely make changes to data flows.
- Data architecture becomes common business knowledge, rather than just a specialist IT subject.
- Perpetual access to your own private client portal.
Client stories
Data strategy, cataloguing and governance in construction regulation and insurance
The challenge
As a leading provider of buildings insurance, the business possessed large volumes of valuable data. But whilst significant resources were being consistently deployed to manage those data, the business wished to fully convert data into business benefits. The leadership team recognised that the business was more ‘data-busy’ than ‘data-driven’ and could more effectively position data as a high-value strategic asset.
Our solution
We provided seasoned data leadership expertise by supplying a part-time Interim Head of Data. From that leadership role, we devised the business’s first data strategy and established a new data team. Once agreed, the new data strategy was deployed through a range of initiatives that established and developed core capabilities in data value, compliance, governance and operations.
The results
Through close collaboration with business leaders, the new data strategy was agreed within two months. Our attention to ‘real-world’ details and the practicality of our accelerators, enabled rapid implementation of beneficial changes including data governance, streamlined data operations and new data insights all occurring within 12 months. We led the creation of a new data catalogue and glossary to round up and clarify over 3,000 data attributes, so they could be integrated into the business’s data warehouse. We set new data quality standards to drive remediation of data quality issues, and just 18 months after adopting the new data strategy, the business’s increased control over its data yielded new commercial data products creating additional sources of revenue, and uncovered in excess of £5M of potential claims savings.
Data strategy, cataloguing and governance in digital media publishing
The challenge
The business had initiated a ‘data flywheel’ programme, to build layers of data capability for incrementally increasing data-driven benefits and positioning data as a high-value strategic asset. Whilst this vision was strong, the business recognised that success required additional skills and flexible resources.
Our solution
We first delivered a 4dDX data strategy workshop for the leadership team, which aligned everyone’s thinking on priorities and next steps. That was followed by our data cataloguing and data governance accelerators, which rapidly uncovered the data flows in the business, and established a data governance framework. Data use cases were defined and documented, clarifying precisely how the business would generate new value from data, and use data in ways that achieved business goals.
The results
Within just three months, the prototype data catalogue made it plain to see where changes in data flows were necessary, and what those changes needed to be. Also within that time, a new cross-functional group of ‘Data Champions’ was formed, to serve as Data Stewards and advocates for data-driven change. As the data catalogue and data governance framework were deployed, we transferred skills and knowledge to various team members, so that they were able to self-sufficiently continue using and developing the business’s new data capabilities.