Need a Great Data Management Recipe? Look no Further.

If you need need a great data management recipe, you will find here.

Data management is a complex field that is becoming even more complex. There are several factors at play, surely you know many of them, but we think that now is the right time to introduce the formal Data Management strategy within the organizations. I started this series in a previous blog with the DAMA DMBOK which covers the strategy aspect. Today I will continue this journey and look at a solution that covers specific knowledge areas of DMBOK. The one CRMT is using and implementing. And we don’t entrust our data just to any environment or solution. Meet Talend.

Just think for a second how many data sources are available to you – now, today. And I am pretty sure you cannot name all the data sources your company has or is actively using. There is so much data out there. How do you capture it, store it, analyze it, get insights from it? How do you know which data to trust?

Nowadays, data is a lot of work. Big data even more so. And to put some order in this chaos one needs data management. It’s not a rule set, a tool, an application. The thing that will efficiently handle all data that is thrown its way is a platform.

At CRMT we went to great lengths and explored just about any data and big data management solution there is on the global market. We ended up using Talend Data Management Platform, which is a part of Talend Data Fabric platform. Why? In my expert opinion, Talend Data Fabric Platform is the only platform that unites data integration and governance to deliver trusted data at your fingertips.

It’s made by experts for companies that want to know what their data is and what they want to do with it. The scores and fancy titles that analytical organizations such as Gartner, Forrester Research, and others give Talend are well merited. This company is a true market leader when it comes to data integration and interoperability, reference and master data, metadata management, and data quality.

And, yet, even the best tool won’t be of good use if one doesn’t know how to use it properly.

What makes Talend’s solutions so special? Well, they deal with data from every single aspect there is, nothing is missing. Let’s take a look at what we use at CRMT.

Pour all your data in a data lake (or an ocean)

Data integration is necessary for any business that wants to build on data. Talend data flows move all your data sources into a clean, complete, and compliant source of truth. Talend Data Integration lets you connect and manage all your data, no matter where it lives. Use more than a thousand (yes, 1,000) connectors and components to connect virtually any data source with virtually any data environment, in the cloud or on-premises. Easily develop and deploy reusable data pipelines with a drag-and-drop interface that is ten (yes, 10) times faster than hand-coding.

Bottom line: Talend provides the utmost flexibility for data integration. Access data behind secure firewalls, locked-in data centers, or secure cloud environments, even if you have unique security or regulatory needs.

Connect all the dots

Then there is interoperability. Talend Application Integration allows companies to meet business demands faster with comprehensive APIs and application integration. By unifying API and application integration, data integration, and data quality, your team can focus on delivering better, faster projects at a lower cost, instead of running down data. Best-in-class interoperability allows for just about any kind of point-to-point integration to bear fruit – you can also build data as a service model in/for your own environment/company.

Because Talend Application Integration eliminates the need for multiple tools or manual code, you can build higher-quality services and applications significantly faster. Simple visual tools and wizards cover the complete development life-cycle, from design, testing, and documentation to implementation and deployment.

Usually, more integrations lead to more data fragmentation and another set of issues. This is where the so-called master data management comes into play. I wrote about how to decrease the spaghetti integration in another post. And, yes, Talend solves this too.

Truly trust your data

You want great data quality. Making decisions based on poor data will yield bad results, right? As an integral part of Talend Data Fabric, Data Quality profiles, cleans, and masks data in real-time.Machine learning additionally helps to address and to solve data quality issues as data flows through your systems. And the best part: the convenient self-service interface is as intuitive for business users as technical users, fostering company-wide collaboration.

As if these were not enough, there are some additional features that are worth every penny. For example, data profiling lets you quickly identify data quality issues, discover hidden patterns, and spot anomalies through summary statistics and graphical representations. While the built-in Talend Trust Score gives you an immediate, explainable, actionable assessment of confidence, so you know what’s safe to share and which datasets require additional data cleansing.

Make your data richer

Once you have turned your data chaos into order, it is time for the next step. As we were looking into metadata management, we discovered another true gem. Talend Data Catalog crawls, profiles, organizes, links, and enriches all your data at speed. More than half of the information associated with the data can be documented automatically. Smart relationships and machine learning, continually deliver the most current data to users and keep the catalog up the to date. A central data catalog allows us to improve data accessibility, accuracy, and business relevance.

I wish companies would truly understand the importance of data management as it is the very foundation of data-driven business. Yet, most companies don’t know where to look, much less where to start.

And big data gets scarier by the day. As I have advocated before – we are here to help you tame your data and make it work for you.