Data Accessibility: What It Is and Why It Matters

While 99% of organizations said that they were investing in data, only 24% felt their organizations were data-driven in the last year — a drop from 37.8% in the year prior. If companies are trying to gather and leverage data, why are so few reporting using data? We think the puzzle is missing one major piece: data accessibility.

What is Data Accessibility?

Data accessibility is the ability of people within your organization to both see and use your company’s data. 

It’s not enough to know that the data lives in some platform or another and if someone really needed it, they could submit a request for a very specific report. Data accessibility means just what it sounds like: making your data easy to get and easy to use. 

Why Data Accessibility Matters

Data accessibility is the key that unlocks all of the potential leaders talk about when they envision a data-driven company.

When data is accessible, various departments can use it to best support their personal goals.

- Sales can use it to fine-tune their pipelines & playbooks.

- Customer support can use it to identify recurring problems and nip them in the bud.

- Marketing can use it to build personalized customer journeys.

- Construction firms use it to track project progress.

• Each of those things can drive your organization forward, but they each require data and data access.

Current Data Accessibility Blockers

How did we get to this status quo? 

Organizations don’t know where to start. 

For starters, our abilities to gather data have scaled much more quickly than our abilities to make that data accessible. Companies aren’t sure how to make their data available and useful to various departments and employees. Many assume that full-scale data accessibility would require such a serious investment of resources that it’s not worth it.

The 'Information Economy' becomes a cultural norm.

There’s another, more insidious obstacle to data accessibility, too. It stems from the information economy many organizations develop, especially big companies. The upper echelon of leaders purports to have the information. Managers don’t have the data, the SVP does — and this reinforces the need to report to the SVP because they’re the source. 

Oftentimes, though, this is all a mirage. An information economy might make a few people seem very knowledgeable, but this kind of gatekeeping disempowers teams and limits the usefulness of the company’s data. 

Moving Past the Blockers

Fortunately, moving past these blockers can actually be fairly easy once the current data gatekeepers release their hold. Increasingly, today’s leaders see that a successful company requires individually successful employees, which means granting them access to the tools and resources they need. Data, in particular, is an invaluable asset in setting employees — and, as a result, organizations as a whole — up for success.

With an increased willingness to make data accessibility a company-wide goal, the main task for leaders to take on is to figure out how to execute that objective. Fortunately for everyone involved, the answer can be simpler than many people expect. 

No Excuses: Technical Barriers are breaking down.

Historically, running any sort of analytics has required data scientists and analysts to gather and collate very specific data sets from various sources. This creates a technical barrier that limits many companies from using analytics frequently enough or broadly enough to drive any sort of meaningful organizational change. 

The end result? Companies collect data, exposing themselves to privacy and security concerns, without any real ROI. The data piles up in various locations, untapped because it’s not accessible.

With a no-code dataflow that integrates with all of your digital tools and pulls data into a single location where it can be both viewed and transformed, you can quickly build out organization-wide data access. 

How Accessibility Improves Your Culture

Still not convinced? Here are a few of the biggest company culture benefits of bringing data accessibility to your organization:

Access to data speeds up processes and requests.

How much time do employees waste requesting information from one department or another? How much time do other employees have to spend creating the responses to those requests? When data gets siloed in certain departments or with certain people, you build barriers that take time for individuals to pass. That slows down your processes. Since today’s customers expect real-time experiences and responsiveness, that can seriously compromise your business.

Data empowers your team to make informed decisions.

Today’s leading companies are moving past the power dynamics of old. It no longer makes sense to have a small group of people hold onto data as a way to bolster their positions. Distributing data access shows every team member that they have a seat at the table. And with the resources they need, they can make more meaningful contributions. 

Improving access prevents gatekeeping.

Intentional or unintentional gatekeeping is a problem. If just one person has access to your data, what happens when they’re tied up in a major process? What if they’re OOO the day a critical data request arises? Because data accessibility moves away from gatekeepers, it ensures that your organization doesn’t run into roadblocks at those gates. 

How Toric Makes Data Accessible

We acknowledged earlier that gatekeeping isn’t the only blocker to data accessibility. A lack of digital tools to support accessibility has been a key factor— at least until now.

With Toric, you can bring all of your data to live in one place. This isn’t a task you’ll have to manage, either continually.

Connect directly to data sources & versions; our no-code dataflow integrates with other systems so there’s no need for manual entry. Once your integrations are set up, you simply hit refresh to get the latest data. 

See this example of model audit data in which you can swap out data-directly in the source.

With this all-in-one data workspace, you get a single source of truth for your data. It all becomes accessible to use it for real-time analysis, insights, and decision-making.

Long story short, if data accessibility is a goal you’d like to see your organization achieve in the near future, we can help. As experts in the subject, we can show you how to set up your dataflow in a way that best supports your company’s unique data visibility and transformation needs. To get started, request a demo today.