For years, companies have spent heavily on software systems and automating tasks. These endeavors brought efficiency but also created an obsessive focus on monolithic business applications. In today’s fast-moving, data-intensive world, this approach is becoming a liability. The truth is that this fixation on inflexible software applications and rigid automation workflows is hobbling business agility and innovation. Without a doubt, it is time for businesses to start adopting a data-centric mindset and stop being application-centric. To do this, businesses need to treat data as a permanent, valuable asset and use it wisely. Only then can businesses unlock better insights and rapidly access emerging technological capabilities that were once beyond their reach.

Without a doubt, I’ve witnessed firsthand how this transition to a data-centric mindset is a paradigm shift that unifies business data and enables unparalleled insights. Moreover, this new way of thinking is an unbeatable competitive advantage, differentiating those businesses that will thrive and those that will be left behind in the future. In this article, I’ll look at the six key benefits that businesses can expect when they make this data-centric shift, maximizing data insights and enabling rapid tech adoption.

Data-Centricity: A New Business Mindset To Overcome Our Limiting Application-Centric Practices.

Enterprise software, despite transforming business operations over the decades, now hinders innovation in the era of “Big Data” and AI. This is because enterprise software to include Software as a Service (SaaS) applications quickly become outdated, break frequently, and are costly to replace. Moreover in most cases, software systems treat their data as a by-product, leading to outdated, disjointed data silos. Of course, businesses have attempted to address this by using data integration and Business Intelligence tools. However, most of these fixes are much like putting a band aid on a festering wound versus a well-thought-out strategy.

On the other hand, there is a new data-centric approach that can overcome these limiting application-centric practices. Indeed, by business leaders adopting this data-centric mindset, their organization can regain agility, establish a Single Source of Truth (SSOT), streamline automation processes, and reignite innovation. This idea of a data-centric mindset is embodied in the Data-Centric Manifesto that is endorsed by numerous tech experts and thought leaders. See below for some of its key principles as they apply to today’s organizations. 

Key Principles of a Data-Centric Organization

A Data Centric Business: The Best Way To Agility, One Truth, Simplicity, Technology Innovation

• Data is a key, permanent asset.
• Enterprises are no longer application-centric. Here, software applications only create, interact, and share data, rather than isolating data for their exclusive use.
• Data is self-describing and does not rely on an application for interpretation and meaning.
• Data is expressed in open, non-proprietary formats.
• Access to and security of the data is a responsibility of the enterprise data layer or the personal data vault, and not managed by applications.

Indeed, adopting a data-centric mindset allows organizations to recognize data as a strategic asset and focus on maximizing its value. Moreover, this approach provides the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions and capitalize on new opportunities. Further, this data-centric mindset becomes the difference between merely automating existing processes versus gaining the data insights to transform the business. For a detailed explanation of what a data-centric business is, see my article, A Data Centric Business: The Best Way To Agility, One Truth, Simplicity, Technology Innovation.

The Benefits of Being Data-Centric with Examples.

Surprisingly, organizations can start reaping the benefits of a data-centric mindset immediately, if their leaders take on this new perspective of data being a valuable, permanent asset.. Now at the same time, it will take time for an entire organization to transition from application-centric to data-centric. However, the benefits of data centricity They include:

For a detailed discussion of these data-centric benefits with examples, see below.

1. Superior Business Agility: Not Chained To Data Silos Or Legacy Applications.

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First, to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced market, businesses need to be agile. However, many organizations are held back by outdated legacy systems and disjointed data silos. A data-centric approach is a compelling solution to untangle this digital mess. Indeed, data centricity enables companies to quickly respond to changes in customer behavior, market trends, and technology, and capitalize on new opportunities. For more on business agility, see my article, Business Agility: The Best Way For Leveraging Digital Tech To Disrupt Competitors, Seize Opportunities, And Overcome Obstacles.

For an example of business agility take a large “data-centric” retailer. In this case, the organization can easily analyze sales data generated by multiple systems and across multiple channels. This results in business leaders making informed decisions about inventory management and marketing strategies.

“Data really powers everything that we do.”

Jeff Weiner

2. High Confidence In Data: There Is A Single Source Of Truth (SSOT) Vs Multiple Versions Or Copies.

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Also, another digital challenge for businesses is that they often have multiple departments or teams working with different sets of data. As a result, the enterprise’s data is fragmented, duplicated, and out-of-date. With a data-centric approach, the organization has one single source of truth (SSOT) ensures that everyone is working with the same accurate information.

Additionally, many businesses and their employees lack confidence in the data that resides in their particular system. Thus, many times the data is either copied or entered over and over again in different systems. As a personal example, I cannot tell you how many times I have as a customer had to re-enter or tell a business’ employee to re-enter my customer information into their business systems multiple times.

To illustrate the benefits of high confidence in data, consider a large financial institution that has adopted a data-centric approach. With this new mindset, the organization can ensure that all its employees are working with the same customer data, reducing the risk of errors, achieving better insights that benefit the entire organization, and improving customer service.

“Data that is loved tends to survive.”

Kurt Bollacker

3. Improved Decision-Making: Having High-Quality Data that is Complete, Accurate, Timely.

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Data-centric businesses make better decisions because they have access to complete, accurate, and timely data. Moreover, advances in AI and data analytics can further enhance decision-making capabilities. However, this only happens when these advanced technologies have high-quality data. For more information on this topic, see my article, AI Impact On Business Decisions – Know How To Best Apply To Get The Most Benefits.

To illustrate the value of a data-centric approach for corporate decision-making, take a large healthcare provider. In this case, a data-centric organization can better use patient data to identify patterns and trends in health outcomes and make informed decisions about treatment options. This is because these employees, nor their systems, do not have to work with partial data sets or out-of-date information. Moreover, decision-making is not just improved, but streamline. Indeed, no longer do employees waste time coordinating with other departments to gather and compare data from different systems.

“There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”

Mark Twain

4. Simplified Software: Lower Costs, Increase Reuse Of Code.

Large businesses often have complex IT systems that require constant maintenance, updates, and worse, large software subscription fees. Many times these software updates happen just because the business has to make use of new types of data. Thus, they, or their software vendor, must continually make programming changes in the software code. With a data centric approach to software, a lot of “bloated” code can be done away with. This is because a “data centric” business software application can just focus on the software functions.

As an example of data centricity reducing software complexity, data-centric software code could focus more on functions versus data content manipulation or filtering. For instance, a data-centric approach leads to data that has links, parameters, and a meta-data structure. As a result, this minimizes software “if” statements directly referencing data content. This reduces development time and costs while improving the quality of software products. Also, there are more opportunities for code reuse as software functions need less customization for different types of data content.

See Yehonathan Sharvit’s blog posting, Principles of Data-Oriented Programming for more on how “data centric” software simplifies coding.  

5. Faster Adoption of Needed Technologies: Including AI, IoT, and Other Data-Intensive Information Technologies.

Data-centric businesses are better equipped to leverage new and needed technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT). These technologies rely heavily on data, making them a natural fit for data-centric businesses. By adopting emerging technologies early on, businesses can gain a competitive advantage and stay ahead of the curve. To detail, see below.

a. Artificial Intelligence: The Need for Quality Data Sets. 

AI is best leveraged if it has access to large, quality data sets. The more a business and its automation is data centric, the better it can quickly leverage the latest AI technologies. See Neptune.AI’s Data-Centric Approach vs Model-Centric Approach in Machine Learning for a detailed explanation of the importance of taking a data centric approach with AI and machine learning (ML).

b. IoT Devices And Systems: The Need to Fully Leverage Data Across the Enterprise. 

Many times IoT systems are implemented for one purpose and then the data gets locked into one system. With a data centric approach, business users across the entire organization can access data for a wide variety of other purposes, now and in the future. For example, a large logistics company that is data-centric can use IoT sensors to track shipments. However, later they can use that same data for optimizing delivery routes, vehicle procurement planning, and so on. For more information on IoT, see my article  Internet Of Things Examples – Hidden Technology Automating Logistics.

Internet Of Things Examples – Hidden Technology Automating Logistics

6. Streamlined Data Security, Integration, And Analytics.

Being data-centric simplifies data security, integration, portability, and analysis by providing a centralized approach for managing data. This data centric approach allows businesses to implement standardized security measures to protect their data from unauthorized access or breaches. It also makes it easier for software applications to access different data sources.

For example, a large ecommerce company that is data-centric can use a centralized approach to store customer information securely and analyze it to improve marketing campaigns. A centralized approach makes it easier to share customer data with other systems such as inventory management or shipping systems. Overall, businesses that are data-centric simplify the management of their data and make better use of their information assets.

“We are surrounded by data, but starved for insights.”

Jay Baer

More Data-Centric References.

For more on the technical aspects of a data centric approach, see Dan DeMers’ post The Shift from an App-Centric to Data-Centric Architecture and Tam Tran-The’s Data Oriented Programming With Python. Also, for more data-centric references, see topics and links below.

• Attributes of a Data-Centric Business: A Data Centric Business: The Best Way To Agility, One Truth, Simplicity, Technology Innovation.
• Differences Between Data-Centric, Data-Driven, and Application-Centric: You Need To Think Data Centric To Be A Successful Business: Stop Being Data Driven, Application Centric.
• Data-Centric Business Strategy Checklist: A Data-Centric Business Strategy Checklist: The Way To Energize A Digital Enterprise To Be More Agile, Bold, And Simplified

A Data-Centric Business Strategy Checklist: The Way To Energize A Digital Enterprise To Be More Agile, Bold, And Simplified

Lastly, if you are in the supply chain industry and need help to implement a data-centric strategy, please contact me to discuss next steps. I have implemented 100s of tech pilot projects and innovative solutions across the supply chain as well as all transportation modes. I specialize in proof-of-concepts (POC) for emerging technologies and data-centric software development methods. To reach me, click here to access my contact form or you can find me on LinkedIn.

For more from SC Tech Insights, see the latest articles on Data and Information Technology.