The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way companies think about their data. In the past “big data” was king; but now, companies talk more about digitizing their data in an effort to meet the needs of their customers.

In many cases, though, companies don’t even own the channels they use, making it harder to take full advantage of the information.

“About 5% of the data of a company drives 90% of the business value,” said Drew Allan (pictured), managing director at Accenture PLC, which provides management and technology consulting services. “So, focusing on those key critical data elements is really what you need to govern first and really invest in first. That’s something we tell companies at the beginning of their data strategy … first focus on those critical data elements; really get a handle on governing that data, organizing that data and building data products around that data.”

Allan spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Cloudera “Transform Innovative Ideas Into Data-Driven Insights” event. They discussed how digitizing and making data more accessible is the next big thing when it comes to the cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

AI helps to process data where a human can’t

Part of the effort of digitizing data lies in the use of artificial intelligence to help sort through the vast amount of data elements that a company can access. In many cases, it’s almost impossible for a human to process all of that data.

“So, really what a machine is leveraging is all that data to calculate and assist the human … with all these opportunities where you wouldn’t have a human being able to scale up to that amount of data alone,” Allan said.

But there is more to it than a company knowing what data it has. Companies also need to put that data to use during the development of new products or services.

“I think this is where thinking about your data operating model, and thinking about ideas of a chief data officer, and having data on the CEO agenda, that’s really important to get the lines of business to really think about data sharing and reuse, and really getting them to kind of unlock the data because they do think about their data as a fiefdom,” Allan stated.

Organizations should be thinking of data as a product, but this can be uncomfortable for some. In reality, they should be thinking about how the data on hand can fuel innovation that the company can then use to monetize new products or services, according to Allan.

For example, the Cloudera Data Platform allows Accenture engineers to quickly configure data organization systems for a variety of users, all with their own unique sets of challenges. Cloudera’s data platform accounts for the speed of the data and allows for real-time insights.

“Data has value, but you’ve got to really get organizations in their silos to open it up and bring that data together, because that’s where the value is,” Allan stated.

Watch the complete video interview here (registration required), and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Cloudera “Transform Innovative Ideas Into Data-Driven Insights” event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Cloudera “Transform Innovative Ideas Into Data-Driven Insights” event. Neither Cloudera Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE