Organisations generate huge amounts of data but struggle to understand what to do with it all. Real value is locked away in data that has been expensive to create and store but has yielded little in return. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for data can be high whereas the Return on Investment (ROI) remains far below where it needs to be.
Data Management is a specialised topic within Information Technology and must be closely aligned to organisational strategy to bring results. Bridging the worlds of strategy and data can be difficult without strong experience in both to be able to spot where efforts are complimentary or contradictory.
Data Strategy & Governance
Creating a comprehensive strategy for the use of data in your organisation is the first step to demystifying the process of making data a truly valuable asset that can be leveraged effectively. Strategic planning for data requires an understanding of the art of the possible as well as appropriate techniques for aligning data initiatives with broader organisational strategies. Minnock Technologies can help define achievable data strategies by providing expertise where it’s needed, directly into the planning process from the outset, aiding you in creating a well-defined data strategy that can enable your organisation to deliver transformational results through insights into customers, products, services, and the environment within which you operate, providing a roadmap to data driven success.
Managing data comes with responsibilities around regulatory and legal compliance that should be factored into initiatives in ways to avoid unnecessary burdens and bureaucracy but that ensure your organisation is more than just compliant but exceeding the expectations of those concerned about privacy and security. Minnock Tech’s experience with GDPR, Data Protection, and Information Security provides organisations with the confidence to put in place successful governance measures that go beyond best practice and give you a competitive edge.
Data Architecture & Engineering
Data Architecture is the design process that enables deep understanding of the data available to an organisation and the processes necessary to maximise the value of that data, while Data Engineering is the technical aspects of moving and wrangling data to make it useful for analytics, reporting, and presentation in applications and dashboards.
Data Architecture delivers understanding through building Enterprise Data Models to present a representation of the data an organisation has access to. In turn, this model can be further refined into more fine-grained representations to aid in the development of the technology and processes that unlock value.
Data Engineering activities are defined by the technical aspects of managing data storage systems including the many different types of databases designed for specific use-cases, as well as the software development of Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) processes to take data from a source, manipulate it into a new format without losing fidelity, and loading it into a target store like a Data Warehouse.
Minnock Technologies brings several decades experience in the architecture, creation, and management of a full range of Data Engineering technologies and procedures that can deliver for any data initiative.
Data Migrations, Acquisition, and Quality
There are many key tasks that must be performed well when organisations set out to make use of their data, requiring the right technology and processes to be in place to be effective. These critical steps are essential before anyone can really trust the insights the data provides or make decisions based on the data. In many ways data is a raw material that must be handled with care to avoid problems occurring later.
Data moves between systems and can do so easily and without issue as long as the movement processes are well understood, and appropriate safety measures are in place to ensure that nothing is lost and nothing untoward is gained that will skew future results. Minnock Tech’s Data Services for Migrations can help to implement such safety mechanisms so you can be confident that the data is moving as safely as possible.
Circumstances often arise where data can benefit from enrichment by input from outside your organisation using data from geographic, financial, weather, traffic, and other readily available and cost-effective sources. Data Acquisition processes add value and new dimensions to the story your data can tell and Minnock Technologies can assist with sourcing, landing, and cleansing data from a variety of public and private data providers.
Every data initiative depends on the data being trustworthy and in formats that are useful, but when data entry is performed by people it is only natural that quality issues can occur. Being able to identify and resolve quality problems before they impact on analytics and other downstream activities is vital to prevent initiatives being derailed before they can have positive impacts. Minnock Tech offers unique data profiling and quality services that can keep your analytics on-track and prevent data quality issues from reoccurring.
Contact Minnock Technologies to discuss your Data Management needs and find out how we can help by emailing: martin@minnock.ie
Please see our Training Services page for details of how Minnock Technologies can help you build skills in the area of Data Management within your team or organisation.