In today’s data-driven world, we’re swimming in information. But is that data truly working for us, or is it often trapped in silos, difficult to access, and inconsistent across applications? It’s time for a paradigm shift. Let’s move beyond thinking of data as a mere byproduct of our operations and start treating it as a first-class citizen: data as a product.
The concept, significantly shaped by pioneers like Thoughtworks in their Data Mesh principles, encourages us to think differently. Instead of monolithic data warehouses or lakes often managed centrally, imagine curated, trustworthy, and easily discoverable datasets designed for specific consumer needs – much like any other product your company offers.
Why embrace data products? Unlocking true value
Moving towards a “data as a product” mindset unlocks immense potential, whether you’re adopting a fully distributed agile approach or taking more measured steps:
- Enhanced discoverability and accessibility: Data products are designed to be found and used. They come with clear ownership, documentation, and defined access methods.
- Improved trust and quality: Reliability is a core tenet. Data products have defined quality standards and Service Level Objectives (SLOs), fostering confidence in their use for decision-making and operations.
- Accelerated innovation: When teams can easily find and trust the data they need, they can build new applications, analytics, and insights faster.
- Domain ownership and expertise: Domain experts who understand the data set typically own data products, leading to higher quality and relevance.
Enter the Data Product Manager: Your data champion
Creating valuable data products doesn’t happen by accident. It requires dedicated ownership. Enter the Data Product Manager. This emerging, crucial role bridges business needs and technical implementation for a specific data domain.
Their responsibilities include:
- Understanding consumer needs: Identifying who needs the data product and for what purpose.
- Defining the product: Specifying the data attributes, quality standards, access patterns, and SLAs.
- Source data wrangling: Collaborating with source system owners and IT to gather, match, merge, cleanse, and integrate data from disparate systems.
- Lifecycle management: Overseeing the development, deployment, maintenance, and eventual retirement of the data product.
- Driving adoption: Evangelizing the data product and ensuring it delivers value to its consumers.
- Monitoring and improvement: Tracking usage and quality metrics to continuously enhance the product.
Measuring what matters: Tracking your data product journey
How do you know if your data product strategy is succeeding? Focus on metrics that reflect value and adoption:
- Adoption rate: How many downstream applications or users consume the data product?
- Data quality score: Are you meeting the defined quality thresholds (completeness, accuracy, timeliness)?
- Consumer satisfaction (NPS for data): Are the users finding that the data product fits their purpose?
- Time-to-value: How quickly can new consumers access and derive value from the data product?
- Reduction in data wrangling effort: Are downstream teams spending less time cleaning and preparing data because the product is reliable?
The powerhouse behind the product: Multi-domain data mastering with Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Data Management (EDM)
Creating robust, trustworthy data products, especially across different business domains (like Customers, Products, Finance, Locations, etc.), requires a solid foundation. This is where a multi-domain data mastering service like Oracle Cloud EDM becomes invaluable.
Oracle Cloud EDM helps enterprises:
- Identify and define data domains: It provides the tools to logically segment your enterprise data into manageable, governable domains – the natural starting point for defining data products.
- Build domain-specific data products: EDM allows you to model, cleanse, enrich, and govern the master and reference data within these domains, forming the core of high-quality data products.
Collaboration and agility: An evolutionary path
Building enterprise-wide data products isn’t always a big bang. Oracle Cloud EDM supports an evolutionary, eventually consistent design. This agility is crucial:
- Distributed collaboration: Different teams, potentially across organizational boundaries, can work together within EDM’s real-time, multi-user environment. They can propose changes, participate in workflows, and reach consensus on data definitions and values.
- Building reusable assets: As you master data within a domain (e.g., defining your official chart of accounts or product hierarchy), that mastered data becomes a reliable, reusable asset – a data product – that benefits the entire organization.
- Engendering trust: Transparent workflows, clear ownership, fully reconciled alternate hierarchies, and auditable change histories within EDM build trust in the data and the processes used to manage it. This trust is fundamental for successful data product adoption.
Harmonize, transform, automate: EDM in action
Oracle EDM Cloud goes beyond simple data storage; it actively facilitates the creation and sharing of data products:
- Intelligent subscriptions: Applications don’t just passively receive data. EDM subscriptions allow downstream systems to listen for changes in source or master applications. When changes occur (e.g., a new cost center is added), EDM automatically propagates these changes.
- Seamless transformation: Data rarely fits perfectly everywhere. EDM subscriptions can transform data structures and values on the fly as they are shared. This ensures data is delivered in the specific format required by consuming applications, accelerating secure sharing without manual intervention. Imagine harmonizing different charts of accounts or product coding schemes automatically.
- Automated data sharing: By automating the synchronization and transformation process, EDM drastically reduces manual effort, minimizes errors, and ensures data consistency across your application landscape.
Start building your data products today
Shifting to a “data as a product” mindset is key to unlocking the strategic value hidden within your enterprise information. It fosters trust, accelerates innovation, and empowers your teams.
Oracle Cloud EDM provides the robust, collaborative, and intelligent platform you need to identify your data domains, build high-quality data products, and automate their secure sharing across your organization.