How Data Lineage Solves Business Problems
Lineage and data governance are essential to thriving mid-to-large scale businesses today. This statement is not made by looking at the best enterprises in the market and noticing they all have some form of metadata management in place. It is a reality that came to be when the GDPR and other data protection regulations were introduced across the world, sending companies scrambling to figure out how to remain compliant whilst retaining business efficiency. Ultimately, companies that changed their business structure to incorporate metadata tools that automatically manage their data are the ones thriving.
Enterprises compete in distinct markets, with different types of customers and business problems. Yet, they all needed to adapt to the new climate of big data and some have actually benefited from adopting metadata management and data lineage tools. This article will discuss how data lineage solves business problems and gives companies an edge.
What is Data Lineage? How does it Solve Business Problems?
Data lineage is a tool whereby businesses are able to gain an end-to-end view of the entire lifecycle of a data asset, its relationships with other data, and the transformations it has undergone. This promotes trust in the organization’s data as stewards are able to see the sources of information and what processes have created its current state. It also provides valuable insights and an easy way to visually understand relationships, which can become very complicated in the modern hybrid enterprise. The most general ways data lineage benefits businesses are:
Why do Data-Driven Enterprises Choose Alex Solutions Data Lineage?
Alex Solutions is a global Leader in metadata management systems. Among our solutions suite, it is our data lineage that makes us elite. Businesses without data governance, that choose metadata tools with suboptimal features, or that are unable to easily implement struggle to keep up with the pace of change. We are aware of how stressful it can be when shopping for data solutions because of uncertainty about what features will be needed, additional costs and disruptions that occur in its implementation. Alex differentiates itself by providing all features, including a world-leading marketplace of in-built connectors which can automate up to 95% of lineage out-of-the-box. Thus, all of Alex’s functions can be seamlessly integrated into your systems to be used quickly, giving companies a head start.
Alex works closely with customers to assist them in leveraging our software to solve real business problems. Some of the most prominent Alex Data Lineage use cases include:
1. Certified Lineage
It is often a necessity that businesses can validate the history of data assets back to the original source. Whether it is to ensure compliance for data protection, to make sure that the data’s quality is trusted so it can be used, or just to be able to quickly track data whenever the situation calls for it.
In one case, the Chief Financial Officer of a major bank wanted to be able to confirm to APRA that all reports that were submitted had a certified lineage. Alex was able to assist by using technically harvested metadata to provide an efficient and reliable line, age of the data within the reports. The completeness of the data that made up the reports were validated so that the CFO was confident in the data to be at a standard that was compliant.
2. Impact Assessment
Data lineage can be considered a bible for business users who need to predict consequences of business decisions. A common use case is that business analysts need to break down data to make predictions.
For example, a data engineer wanted to investigate the downstream effect of decommissioning a data asset. They wanted to be sure that such changes would not affect indirect users of the data. Alex enabled them in two major ways: (1) key usage statistics that identified areas for decommissioning were provided, (2) where the data asset lay within the overall data landscape was contextualized.
The engineer had downstream impacts visually rendered on their screen so they could visualize downstream impacts of change. Additionally, they used Alex’s features to access a catalog that defined which assets would be affected by the change and their associated owners that would be impacted. Armed with this information, which was quickly and easily gathered, the data engineer was able to decommission assets knowing that there would be no unexpected downstream impacts.
3. Contextualization
Data lineage is useful at a high level, but also facilitates much deeper analysis of data assets, systems and their relationships.
For example, data quality analysts of a manufacturer needed to know which data assets and reports used Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) to know where to focus their data quality checks. Using Alex’s lineage, all data assets associated with specific business terms like ‘SIC’ were traced and visually displayed, heavily increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the analysts.
In another case, a data architect was tasked with simplifying their organization’s data landscape. They used Alex to capture the whole data landscape into one place and enabled reporting on assets under a certain usage threshold. Then, they used Alex lineage tools to identify pathways with high degrees of complexity, orphan assets and duplicated assets. The architect had the ability to view all assets in the landscape, filter and find what they needed, navigate through the assets to gain further understanding, and then use that information to determine which assets could be decommissioned to simplify the data landscape as a whole.
How Alex Can Help Solve Your Business Challenges?
The dynamic nature of business today means that organizations need a data governance system that is flexible and delivers value and clarity at speed. Alex Solutions is designed to solve real business challenges in a wide spectrum of use cases. Alex provides enterprises with the tools to leverage data for all business outcomes. If you would like to read more about the benefits of Alex lineage, click here. If you are interested in how Alex can help your business problems, please request a free personalized demo, so that we can discuss how Alex can assist you with your specific needs.
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