Sathis M - ChainSys Blog

Data Estate: Building Sophisticated Data Infrastructure Through Modern Technologies

by Sathis M | Dec 6, 2022 | Data Integration, Data Migration, Smart Data Platform

Data, pandits say, is now the most valuable resource on the planet. Even more than oil. With the world advancing daily and adopting newer digital technologies with every passing minute, it hardly seems like an exaggeration. Today, data is the most valuable currency a company possesses.

Today’s organizations deal with voluminous data on a daily basis. Whether it’s data generation, storage, or harnessing data to make business decisions, data plays an integral role in multiple operations that are vital to the functioning of these companies. Different teams have access to, handle, and analyze this data on an ongoing basis, making data management a cumbersome task.

What is Data Estate?

Companies are drowning in data coming from heterogeneous sources and struggling to find a solution to structure it all. That’s why a term called Data Estate is trending in the industry nowadays.

Data Estate is nothing but all the data, from all the sources, that a company owns and is usually what needs modernization. It’s simply to build a data infrastructure, through modern technologies to ingest and store all your data with governance and quality protocols in place. This can be developed on-premise or cloud. You can even get the best of both worlds by using a Hybrid approach depending on the business requirements. This helps make organizations proficient in storing, managing, and leveraging your data for analytics including business applications, IoT, departmental data, and more!

How to Get Started:

Before you begin towards building a successful data estate, there are a few key questions that should be answered which will guide you in your journey of implementing an infrastructure.

What is your end goal that you want to achieve?
What are your short term and long term business requirements?
What are your current Business processes and how do they integrate with your current data processes?
Who will have access to the data and which data will these persons have access to?
Would you like to go On-Prem, Cloud or Hybrid? Why?
What will your construction Partners look like?
It is a complex and challenging project. Make a roadmap with smaller tasks to achieve the end goal.

Seems overwhelming? But it’s really not. ChainSys will be able to help you answer all these questions and build the entire infrastructure for you including automation. Our end-to-end data management platform ensures data access in a clean and secure manner while standardizing all data to minimize the risk of data loss, duplication, etc. This ultimately translates into real-time results which harness the true value of your data while saving you money, time, and resources.

How ChainSys Can Help:

With over two decades in the industry, we have helped a plethora of clients from various industries including, energy, aviation, finance, technology, manufacturing, and more! Our data solutions are 360-degree right from the beginning, all the way to the end, some of which include:

Migration & Integration
Quality, Cleansing & Governance
Active Metadata Management
Enterprise Data Management
Analytics and much more

At ChainSys, our approach is customer-centric. We begin by understanding all the above requirements and build a customized team of experts that are experienced with your industry and uniquely suited to tackle your specific challenges. This team will then dive deep into your business and data processes, and your legacy systems and do all the necessary homework. Following which, we will not only draw out solutions specially designed for you but also build a roadmap to help us achieve your goals together, in a timely fashion.

If you’re looking to level-up your data management game, get in touch!

To view all the Solutions we offer, click here.

Top 3 Benefits of Utilizing Data Masking

by Sathis M | Nov 28, 2022 | dataZense

In many ways, data is the lifeblood of a company. Through the use of customer data and internal information, a business can set themselves up for success and stand apart from the competition. However, that makes data a valuable thing that untrustworthy individuals want to gain access to. Read on to learn the top three benefits of utilizing data masking.

What Is Data Masking?

Data masking transforms information from sensitive information into a nonsensical, non-sensitive string of characters. For instance, “John Smith, 707 Main Street” may become “asdw g54Gep v35 54Yb tw90f.” This keeps the information safe even if it falls into the wrong hands.

The Customer Element

One benefit of using data masking is that it proves to your customers that you are trustworthy. Customers want to know that their private information will stay secure, and they’re willing to go out of their way to ensure that happens. If you don’t have credentials on your website that make potential customers feel safe, they will not want to do business with you.

The Compliance Element

You must meet certain legal requirements when working with sensitive information. Data masking and protection are not always something a company can utilize, but in many cases, they are legally required to maintain compliance.

Self-Protection

Data masking isn’t only capable of protecting customer information—it also protects your company’s sensitive data. Bad actors can seek out a business’s information in the same way they may look for customer social security numbers and credit card numbers.

When you want the best data protection for your company, come to ChainSys. We’re here to answer any questions you may have and will set you up with top-notch data masking software.

Now that you know the top three benefits of utilizing data masking, you can keep your information and that of your customers out of the hands of bad actors. Even if they gain access to the information, data masking will ensure they won’t be able to understand or use it successfully.

3 Ways to Continually Improve Your Data Governance

by Sathis M | Nov 28, 2022 | Smart Data Platform

A wise man once said, “with great power, there must also come great responsibility.” While he wasn’t talking about data, he might as well have been! A company’s data is like its lifeblood—you must keep it safe, secure, and well-regulated if the company wants to thrive. Data governance is the responsible path toward data security. Read on to learn three ways to continually improve your data governance.

Defining Data Governance

Data governance is a process, but not one that you undertake just once. Data governance must constantly be in place in your company to ensure data protection. At its simplest, data governance defines the regulations you enact to monitor and control data within your organization.

Establish Your Framework

The first step to improving data governance is to set up your framework—how do you want your data governance to work? It should be simple and easy to see who has access to what data. Also, develop guidelines to show how to measure successful data governance for your company.

Set Up Controls

Once you figure out the big picture, it’s time to dive into the specifics. Data controls are the rules and regulations that dictate which employees have access to certain information. Whenever any employee accesses a piece of data, that moment gets cataloged and recorded for future reference.

Monitor Your Data

That’s where data monitoring comes in. Data pipeline tools help companies keep track of data use in case anyone does something with your data that they aren’t supposed to. When you realize there’s been a breach, it’s simple to work back to find out who accessed that information so you can handle the situation appropriately.

Now that you know these three ways to continually improve your data governance, don’t hesitate to take your business to the next level. Whether you improve data governance and security or data integration and analytics, each change makes you more competitive and viable in an ever-changing business environment.

3 Ways to Leverage Data as a Strategic Asset

by Sathis M | Nov 28, 2022 | Data Migration, dataZap

No matter where you turn for business advice, you’ll always hear the same thing: find a way to leverage your data. While that may be a great tip, it’s missing an essential part of the equation: how? Consider these three ways to leverage data as a strategic asset.

Connect With Customers

Customers want personalization, and you can use data to give them just that. Tailor advertisements to individuals and determine which of your products is perfect for them. When a customer feels like a company understands them, they’re much more likely to make a purchase.

Make Data-Based Decisions

Data can help make you smarter. Even if you’re the smartest person on the planet, you still have the potential to make mistakes that numbers simply don’t. Utilize those numbers and data analytics to make decisions driven by hard data. That way, you can set up your company to perform well for years to come.

Optimize Your Website

Did you know you can collect data on how people view your website? Demographics are one thing, but you can actually obtain information that tells you exactly what people are doing when they visit your site. For example, you can see which images people look at the longest, which links they click on, and on which page they decide to close your website.

Using that information, you can start to build a better website. Utilize the pictures your viewers seem to prefer, and figure out why everyone decides to leave your site after reading your “About” page. With an optimized website, you’ll find yourself enjoying more conversions than ever before.

If you’re not sure how to gain any of these benefits, you may want to consider implementing Microsoft data migration to bring your systems to the next level.

Now that you know these three ways to leverage data as a strategic asset, make sure your systems are working for you and not against you. The right master data management system will actively help your business leverage data better; consider a data migration if you find yourself fighting against your current software.

What Is Master Data Management and Why Is It Important?

by Sathis M | Nov 28, 2022 | dataZen, Master Data Management

Working with data is unavoidable for companies that want to stay relevant. However, just “working with data” isn’t always enough to cause you to stand out from the pack. To set yourself apart, you need to work with data more efficiently and effectively than your competitors. That’s where master data management comes in. But what is master data management, and why is it important?

You’ve come to the right place. Read on to discover what you need to know about master data management.

Master Data Management: Explained

To understand the management part of master data, the first step is understanding master data. When we break it down to its simplest definition, master data refers to the most vital instances of data in your enterprise—all of the information that’s required to conduct business.

Of course, this can be further divided into a few different domains. For instance, your customers, products, and locations are all key elements of master data. Without any one of those elements, your company could not survive. You should also consider a subset of “other” factors, like warranties and contracts. All these unique elements comprise your master data.

Master data management, then, refers to how your business handles all that information. Now, things may get a bit more confusing. Master data management technology, often called MDM, allows you to perform tasks with data management in mind. Master data management as a discipline is more conceptual—it gives you principles that will help you govern your data successfully.

Reduced Workload

The collection and maintenance of master data is a full-time job—one that you should leave to a dedicated master data management system. Without one, you’re expecting every department to spend time managing their own data alongside their regular job functions.

As soon as you remove data management from the workload, all your departments will find it easier to complete their work on time (or even early). A master data management system allows you to collect each piece of data simultaneously rather than having each department collect and utilize the data separately.

Over time, this makes your business quicker and more efficient, which saves you money while getting the reports you need on time.

Higher Data Quality

When separate departments are responsible for maintaining their data, you’re bound to run into snags along the way. Without a way to manage master data, departments will grow away from each other rather than together, leading to problems with collaboration that only increase as you go.

Master data management allows everyone to access a single source of data, which means your information will not dilute as time goes on.

Avoids Data Duplication

One aspect of data quality that is often overlooked is duplicate data. When you don’t have a system that can look for and detect duplicate data, you may find yourself with information that gums up the works. With a decentralized data application, you’re more likely to run into redundancy that can take up your time and cause errors throughout the process.

Duplicate data becomes a significant hurdle when you acquire information from customers. Slight changes in your questionnaires over the years may cause customers to enter their information multiple times in slightly different ways. For instance, you may have records that refer to a customer living at 1340 Delta Avenue and another record that lists them at 1340 Delta.

You don’t need both these instances, and it may cause a less intelligent program to assume you have one more customer than you do. When this issue occurs across hundreds or thousands of customers, you’re left with analytics that doesn’t accurately reflect your customer base.

With an MDM solution, you won’t need to worry about duplicate data. Your MDM will scour through data to find repeat instances and remove them, increasing your efficiency.

Reduced Time-to-Market

Setting up new systems is always a headache, right? It doesn’t need to be with a dedicated MDM. Connecting a new system to your primary MDM system instantly populates the new application with all the data it needs to hit the ground running.

Upgraded Decision Making

When all your data is in one place, your teams can make decisions with a clearer picture. Without a master data management system, you can think of this process like putting together a puzzle without the box—you may have all the pieces, but you don’t know the picture you’re trying to create!

As new data comes in, it instantly updates the information across your company. This leads every team to make decisions with all the latest information they need to propel them toward success.

Compliance and Governance

Regarding benefits, “compliance and governance” may not be the most attractive words, but they are some of the most essential words should you want your business to stay strong for years to come. While it may sound more appealing to increase efficiency and reduce your workload (which MDM can also do), you can’t maintain a company without staying in compliance and structuring your systems with governance.

This structure allows you to restrict access to data, giving your employees the information they need to do their jobs effectively while preventing them from accessing data they shouldn’t. All interactions with data are also cataloged, which means it’s easy to trace problems back to their source so you can correct them.

Reduced Security Risk

Extrapolating on this further, MDM tools also assist you in tightening your security. Breaches are extremely serious; if they happen, you can quickly see where the problem began so you can address it.

In all, a business equipped with the right master data management tools stands to work more efficiently and safely than other companies in the game.

Now that you know what master data management is and why it’s important, start the next chapter of your business’s story and begin working in an MDM system. You won’t believe how adding an MDM system to your business pipeline can completely transform how you work!

« Older Entries

Next Entries »