What is Data Agility & Why It is Important for an Enterprise?

What would happen if you were stranded at sea? The first thing that would affect you is dehydration because seawater is undrinkable. All that water, and you cannot even take a sip. 

A similar situation is prevalent with big data and enterprises. 

There’s a lot of data available in today’s environment, but very little of it is usable and actionable. The focus so far has been on ensuring data protection for business-critical data rather than how to make sense of this data.  

Hence, modern-day enterprises are observing a pressing need for data agility. 

What is Data Agility?

Agility, by its definition, is the ability to move quickly with ease in the right direction. 

In terms of data, agility means collecting, organizing, studying, and acting upon data quickly and easily. It mainly refers to a quick, active system that works fast and delivers accurate results. 

Most enterprises have covered some ground in the collection and protection of data. And must now focus on gaining the data agility edge for business gains. 

From a big data perspective, the data agility meaning is similar. It is the use of a system to collect and organize data quickly and get actionable information from it for the benefit of the enterprise. 

Why Do You Need Data Agility?

To create synergy between your enterprises’ IT and business. 

Right now, there’s a massive disparity between the ability to collect/process the data and using the data to create value. We’re gathering data faster than the business can properly utilize it. 

We’re living in the age of business intelligence backed by irrefutable data. Data agility management is the key to optimum business intelligence. 

Most legacy systems allow you to store and process data well, but when it’s time for the business analyst to use this data, there is a dependence on the IT team to extract the required data. This dependence can be a big problem since the analyst often needs to look at some of the data and refine the requirement to narrow or expand the scope. The inability of the analyst to have direct access to the data impacts the organization’s ability to respond quickly to market inputs. 

Data agility allows analysts to do their work without needing them to be IT experts to extract and work with the data. Analysts can get down to brass tacks without the pressure of balancing business needs with IT actions. Analysts can quickly sift through data to get insightful, actionable information without the hindrances of complex legacy systems. This ability will help your enterprise use data for better business intelligence. 

How does an Enterprise benefit from having Data Agility?

Now that you know what is data agility, it’ll be easier to understand how your enterprise will benefit from it. 

Irrespective of your company’s sector, your business will be dealing with much data going forward.

Data is unpredictable, constantly growing, changing, and evolving along with data schemas and formats. Data can also come from different sources; you need a data management system with rich self-service tools that can adapt to your ever-changing data needs.  

You may be able to store and process data through legacy data management systems, but you will need a new-age data management system to extract value from your data. The key benefits of adopting a next-gen data management platform are:

1. Your analysts can work with data directly, bypassing referring to IT for data extraction.
2. They will have the freedom to be creative when looking for insightful information. 
3. You can take and work with data from anywhere. 
4. A flexible data management platform can add on without a costly system overhaul.
5. Your IT team can concentrate on more improvement initiatives than data extraction.
6. You won’t have to invest in expensive IT experts or tools.      

And these are just a few reasons why data agility is essential for enterprises. 

You’ll experience many more benefits once you invest in a cloud data management system like Vaultastic. 

It is a cloud data management system powered by AWS, designed for modern data challenges. 

The modern data agility definition is ever evolving. Hence, we have designed a system that evolves with the changing data needs and intentions. 

It can take your enterprise to the next level. 

Experience data agility first hand. Sign up for a free trial.