having the ability to seek out the correct data cataloguing has become tougher than it ever has been. It is absolutely imperative to grasp the sort of data that you have currently, what it can be used for, and the way it must be protected. Furthermore, you would want to avoid putting several layers around your data as is may become unproductive if it is too arduous to be used.

There are several challenges with finding and accessing the correct data, like:

• Wasted time and energy on finding and accessing data
• Data lakes turning into swamps
• No common business vocabulary
• Hard to grasp structure and style of “dark data”
• Difficult to assess place of origin, quality, veracity
• No way to capture missing data
• Difficult to reuse data and knowledge assets

In the past few years, the idea of a data catalogue has become common due to the increasing amounts of data that needs to be managed and accessed. Cloud, data analytics, AI and machine learning have began to amend the way we need to visualize, manage, and leverage data, to be able to use it resourcefully.

A data catalogue should enable your business to:

• utilise, enrich, manage, and add value to the company’s existing data
• find and classify information at scale
• enhance digital transformation like Machine Learning and AI.
• empower the marketing, sales, and other operations of your business
• improve the visibility of information and enforce data security policies
• allow users, from analysts to information scientists to developers, to find and utilise data better

Fostering enterprise-wide information among business users to be able to display massive information with insights is the end goal of each organisation seeking competitive advantage. However, for information to be collected, shared and deployed effectively, an IT services provider or partner is better equipped to manage the preparation of data catalogues using large amounts of information. Data is a valuable commodity, but it becomes an asset when transformed into significant client insights and improved outcomes. Ensuring success with vast enterprise data needs the proper alignment of the various verticals of the business, technology and processes to make a comprehensive data catalogue. A data catalogue organises the technical details around data assets into streamlined, relevant and searchable business assets.

The edge of having a data catalogue:

A data catalogue is a vital tool because of the ability to process all the information about the business and organise it in an intelligent easy-to-use format. It provides clarity to the accumulated data, and assigns the essential attributes to the data so that users are able to leverage that information for maximum profitability. It also provides seamless integration between different departments so that users are able to cross reference or have information on which department to address their query to. A data catalogue offers businesses a clear understanding of the flow and dependencies of their data. By establishing enterprise-wide data definitions and transparency, business users are able to communicate effectively, ensuring the right use of data, at the right time for the right purpose. A data catalogue cannot be put together overnight. A data catalogue takes months, sometimes years, of maintaining data governance and building it over a period of time.

Using a data catalogue efficiently involves data usage in a manner that leads to:

• Cost savings
• Operational efficiency
• Competitive edge
• Better client management
• Fraud and risk advantage

A “modern” data catalogue:

Now that you have been introduced to the idea of a data catalogue, let us explore a modern data catalogue. You have the advantage and knowledge of all the data available in your business. You can equip this data powerhouse with tools to format, regulate, and curate whatever is within your data so your data catalogue becomes a living marketplace of valued data within your organisation.

If you were to do this manually, it would be a tedious and long operation. Not to mention, confusing! With all the data needing to be cross referenced as well. However, modern data catalogues have an in depth capacity of powerful capabilities like pattern detection, relationship discovery, pervasive identification, automatic harvesting and classification so are able to highlight data quality problems easily and apply corrective measures.

Key features of a successful data catalogue:

Search and discovery: A data catalog should have versatile search and filter options to enable users to find relevant sets of data in optimum time frames. Data catalogues should have the provision to enable users to enter technical information, user defined tags, or business terms which aids to improve the efficiency of the search.

Harvest information from various sources: Your data catalogue should have the ability to extract technical information from a variety of connected data assets, including object storage, self-driving databases, on-premises systems, and much more.

Curate metadata: Offer the simplest way for subject matter experts to contribute business information with the business glossary, tags, associations, user-defined annotations, classifications, ratings, etc.

Automation and data intelligence: AI and machine learning are often a must. Any and all manual tasks that can be automated should be automated with AI and machine learning techniques to truly augment capabilities with data, such as providing data recommendations to data catalogue users and the users of other services in a modern data platform.

Enterprise-class capabilities: Your data is important, and you need wider capabilities such as identity and access management, to use it properly. Also, the fact that customers and partners will constantly contribute information which will be captured to be further harvested, increasing the capabilities of the data catalogue system.

Your data catalogue is a powerful tool that should become THE go-to tool for information across all the verticals of your business with queries ferried to the right service or department.