Modern businesses collect and process large amounts of data, but are they leveraging that data to its maximum potential? That’s where data enablement comes in. Data enablement allows organizations to harness the power of their valuable data, unlock insights from it and drive strategic decision-making. Data enablement empowers these insights and data-driven decisions by making the right data readily available in the right format at the right time.

In this blog, we’ll be diving into why data enablement is important, how it benefits businesses and how you can implement data enablement in your organization. If you’re ready to get started with data enablement right away, you can click below to start using Secoda for free or read on to learn more about data enablement.

Why is it important?

Data enablement is quickly becoming an essential process for data-driven businesses. It’s important for numerous reasons, including:

• Provides Structure — Data enablement processes and tools provide infrastructure to guide the collection, storage, analysis and usage of data. It helps your team access the data they need when they need it.
• Leverage Data — Enabling access to data allows businesses to leverage their data like never before. Leveraging your data allows you to gain valuable insights, identify patterns and make better decisions. It helps organizations gain visibility into data and find new opportunities that may have been missed otherwise.
• Scale Data Technologies — Data enablement also allows organizations to explore data from different sources and apply new technologies to gain deeper insights. With data enablement processes in place, it's easier to scale data processes as your business grows since everyone understands how to use and access data.‍
• Collaboration — Data enablement makes it possible to share data more easily across departments and even externally with partners and customers. This creates more avenues for collaboration.

In short, data enablement is important because it maximizes your potential to make the most of your data. Collecting data is expensive and resource-intensive, so it only makes sense that you’d want to leverage it.

What are the benefits?

Data enablement provides several benefits to organizations. Here are some of the most notable benefits:

• Improved Data Insights — With data enablement processes and tools in place, users can access data quickly and easily. This means improved data insights and better data-driven decisions. It allows users to improve processes, be more productive and make the most of the data available. It also makes data easier to find and easier to use.
• Save Time, Money and Resources — One of the key benefits of data enablement is its ability to reduce the time spent on manual tasks. Data enablement allows for easier data discovery, letting users pull up the data they need in seconds rather than searching for it or putting in a request to wait for data. This saves time and resources, allowing users to focus on high-value tasks rather than tedious data-related tasks.
• Enable Data Sharing and Collaboration — Data enablement also makes it easier for organizations to collaborate on projects. Teams can easily share data across departments and update organization-wide information instantly. This way everyone is on the same page, and there are no duplicates, data silos or other issues to worry about. 
• Build Data Literacy and Data Democratization — Data enablement makes it much easier for nontechnical users outside the data team to take advantage of the data. It allows them to query data, build visualizations and create dashboards without needing to understand complex technical concepts. This makes it much easier for non-technical users to make sense of the data and derive insights from it. It also means fewer tedious tasks for the data team. Instead of nontechnical users relying on the data team for data requests, they can just search the data themselves and get what they need right away. No more data bottlenecks slowing down your processes.

These are just a few of the benefits that organizations see when they embrace data enablement. The benefits of data enablement are clear, and the tools are only getting better.

Why is data enablement helpful for nontechnical users outside the data team?

As mentioned, one of the most important benefits of data enablement is how it helps nontechnical users outside the data team. But why is this so important and how is it helpful to these users?

Companies that use data daily typically have data teams who process data requests and help get information to business teams and non-technical users. While this process works, it’s not ideal. It's inconvenient for both parties. The data team has to interrupt their tasks to fulfill data requests and the other users have to wait for their requests to come back.

What if a nontechnical user could just search for the data they need instead? What if that data was also delivered to them in a format they could easily understand? That’s how data enablement works. Non-technical users will be less intimidated by data, and they’ll be empowered to use it to drive more decisions.

This also helps build data literacy, as data enablement tools make it easier to find, visualize and analyze data quickly and effectively. They can also be used to create dynamic reports and dashboards that offer key insights. Data enablement tools can help these nontechnical users collaborate with others on data sets. 

Additionally, nontechnical users will be able to more easily keep up with data trends and evolving data technologies. Without data enablement, nontechnical users may fall behind. Instead, it gives them the tools they need to understand and use the data.

In short, data enablement is an invaluable tool for nontechnical users outside the data team. By having access to comprehensive data sets and analytics, these users can better understand business trends, make smarter decisions and access data when they need it.

The future of data enablement

As businesses increasingly rely on data to make decisions, the importance of data enablement will only grow. Data enablement tools are gradually becoming more ubiquitous along with automating many data tasks that previously had to be pushed on data teams. The future of data enablement is bright, to say the least. Here are some trends that will likely become more prevalent as data enablement tools continue to evolve:

• AI and Machine Learning — Businesses are already harnessing AI and machine learning in many ways, and these technologies are only becoming more advanced. AI and machine learning will continue to be leveraged to provide more robust insights, identify patterns and forecast data trends.
• Cloud Computing — It’s often more efficient and cost-effective for businesses to store and access their data from the cloud. These solutions allow companies to securely store vast amounts of data, making it more accessible to all of their teams. 
• Data Architectures — Data architectures continue to progress to make data transformation and access faster and easier. As organizations continue to streamline data management and enablement processes, data architectures will continue to evolve too.
• Real-time and Predictive Analytics — The future of data enablement will allow data discovery on advanced levels. All users will be able to access real-time data and utilize advanced predictive analytics to grow their knowledge and make the best decisions possible.

Data enablement tools are becoming critical components of the modern data stack. To stay competitive, organizations need to harness these technologies and maximize their data capabilities. If you’re looking for the right data enablement tools to utilize in your company, we have some suggestions to get you started.

Popular tools

Data enablement has come a long way in the past few years, and now many different tools are available to help users make the most of their data. Some popular tools for data enablement include: 

• Tableau — Tableau is a business intelligence platform that helps people access, analyze and visualize data in an interactive and visually appealing way. It also offers features like self-service data, machine learning and more. 
• Informatica — Informatica is a comprehensive data management cloud that helps businesses democratize their data. Informatica offers features for data cataloging, data integration and more.
• Talend — Talend is an end-to-end data management solution that combines data integration, data quality and data governance. Talend offers features to unify your data and get more value from it.
• Google BigQuery — Google BigQuery is a cloud-based data warehouse that makes storing and analyzing large amounts of data easy. It offers features like real-time streaming and an intuitive interface. 
• Secoda — Secoda is an all-in-one data enablement platform that empowers all of your users to search and discover data. With Secoda, users can find the data they need as easily as doing a Google search.

These are just some of the popular tools that can help with data enablement. However, it’s important to consider the needs of your organization and choose the tool that fits best.

Try Secoda for free

If you’re looking for a comprehensive data enablement platform, Secoda is your solution. Secoda is a data enablement suite of tools that includes data cataloging, data discovery, data access management and much more. Give your team the power to leverage your business data and make more data-driven decisions. Try Secoda for free and find out what it can do for your organization.