In praise of the data silo

The argument against data silos is widely accepted, data silos, or islands of data, are one of the greatest barriers to an efficient usage of data and to unlock the potential of analytics for business decision processes.

So, breaking down these silos is a common approach to gain the access to data and enable it for analytics, data science, or artificial intelligence initiatives.

However, silos are part of a dynamic within each organization.

Data silos were born out of an organization’s growth, the result of years of initiatives driven by business problems, years of different business strategies, multiple technological options, and even resulting from mergers or acquisitions.

From the data perspective, data silos are an abnormality, they impact data sharing, data quality, the costs of data acquisition and preparation, they have a serious impact on the insights that can be driven from data, and more critically they impact on an organization’s competitiveness.

However, strictly from a business perspective, data silos, aside from their technical efficiency, can make sense.

Can we think of silos as an agile framework to achieve business objectives? Can silos be used as part of a solid data foundation within the organization?

The degree of autonomy that led to the existence of the data silos is also a critical piece within building strong, successful organizations.

When most organizations are pushed into more flexible structures, more agile decision processes, to face more complex and volatile business environments, talking about breaking down the silos, aren’t we risking destroying this dynamic?

Overcoming the challenge of the data silos impacts, demands a progressive, pragmatic approach. The objective is to enable an organization to benefit from data in a consistent, organization-wide manner, and to make it data-driven — without dramatically disrupting its fabric.

Jumping into a cross-organization platform, a new infrastructure, that supports all the business needs, or building a data lake to integrate and support all the data needs – and most likely to rapidly turn into a data swamp – are options that need to be carefully planned, that requires larger investments, and that is not within reach for most organizations.

Data is a critical and strategic asset for any organization, making essential that the right information is available at the right time to the right people – and this must be the primary objective in this process – that will enable the organization to gain the insights for better business decisions, increase efficiency and productivity and promote a consistent and effective use of data across the organization.

The option for a progressive, incremental, more focused approach will produce long-term benefits, creating traction and increasing the awareness across the organization and will end-up acting as the motor from within, out of the initial iteration.