Are you building your Data Kingdom from a blueprint?

Where is that data? I know we’ve got it somewhere!

Ever been in that position or heard such frustration from your analysts?

This is an age of ever-growing appetite for more & more data on your customers. Data Kingdoms are expanding every day.

Sometimes this results in problems caused by lack of planning. What I mean is this… Too many databases, data warehouses or even networked (Hadoop et al) solutions resemble a “make it up as we go along” data structure.

The urgency to add a new data feed or data items overrides any controlling structure or grand design. To reduce IT costs, time or both, data is added where it can most easily be squeezed in. This neglects the benefits of a robust data modelling foundation for your data kingdom.

In my work helping customer insight teams, I too often find that either Conceptual and Logical Data Models don’t exist, or they have been neglected for too long. Do you have such foundations to your data strategy? Were they originally designed to reflect your business strategy & plans? Are they updated when your challenges & opportunities change?

Rather than write further on this topic at this stage, we are overdue for another reader poll. Please answer the few questions below, to help clarify where you are all at, with regards to this topic…

 

It will be fascinating to see your answers to those questions. Will you confirm that Conceptual & Logical data modelling are being too often neglected in favour of fast-fix data solutions that store up confusion for the future? If you can’t wait until mature results are in & want to know more about this topic, check out this previous post where I shared a tutorial that I recommend.

Looking forward to hearing whether your Data Kingdom is being built according to a blueprint or just emerging out of regular battles.