Data Operations for Times of Crisis

Annie Bishop June 4th, 2020

5 Ways Improving Data Operations Will Prepare Your Organization For the Next Crisis 

Zaloni and DXC Technology recently hosted a webinar on Crisis-Ready DataOps. During the webinar, Susan Cook, Zaloni’s CEO and Jim Coleman, Lead Architect for Partner Integration at DXC Technology, discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted business priorities and changed how companies view data management and data operations. 

The main takeaway from the webinar was how data operations, or DataOps, better prepares you for future times of crisis and disruption. In this blog post, we’ll cover 5 ways DataOps helps you succeed with your most critical use cases today and overcome unforeseen challenges that may arise in the future. 

Data Agility Enables Quick Response

DataOps provides a holistic view of your end-to-end data supply chain, including various data pipelines and operations that occur from data ingestion to final consumption. When the CARES Act was signed into law, banks needed to quickly set up new data processes and pipelines to handle the enormous volume of data needed for Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loan applications. 

Banks with a modern data architecture and DataOps practice in place were able to adapt immediately and were prepared to ingest, integrate, enrich and provision the loan data efficiently. The banks that were able to submit applications quickly were more likely to secure loans for their customers, improving customer experience and satisfaction. 

Take Action: Consider modernizing your data architecture to support agile DataOps and provide complete visibility and control over your end-to-end data supply chain. This modern architecture quickly onboards and integrates new data sources for your analytics initiatives. 

Automation Improves Efficiency While Reducing Costs 

During times of crisis, automation helps companies quickly build and operate new data pipelines quickly and cost effectively. The main objective of the DataOps methodology is to optimize the data supply chain. To do this, various steps and workflows within the supply chain are automated and, in some cases, leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate manual processes that couldn’t be automated before. 

Automation increases productivity, reduces costs and gets data to end-users quickly. Additionally, automation improves data quality by recommending and automating data quality workflows and reducing manual errors. 

Take Action: Evaluate your data supply chain for workflows and steps that can be automated to improve data pipeline efficiency, reduce costs and accelerate time to analytics. 

Data Governance Reduces Risk and Ensures Regulatory Compliance

Data governance has continued to grow in importance for IT teams as consumers demand data protection and regulations such as GDPR and CCPA are passed. During the COVID-19 pandemic companies on the frontlines such as banks, healthcare providers,  and pharmaceutical companies were dealing with an enormous influx of customer and patient data containing sensitive information. 

Companies with a DataOps platform in place quickly onboarded these new data sources, masked or tokenized the data for privacy and security then enabled governance controls and tacked data lineage at every step in the data supply chain. 

Take Action: Take a holistic approach when thinking about data governance and how you track, control and protect data at every step in your data supply chain. 

Self-Service Access Accelerates Analytics 

The ability for data analysts and scientists to quickly find and use relevant data is essential for productive and effective data analytics. Through a self-service data catalog, data consumers easily browse, prepare and provision data sets without needing to go through an IT team. The catalog helps reduce time to analytics and exposes data scientists enterprise-wide datasets for new analytics insights. 

During a time of crisis or disruption, providing analysts and scientists with fast and easy data access data helps companies adapt and, in some cases, discover new revenue streams or business opportunities. 

Take Action: When adding self-service capabilities to your data catalog, include the ability to not only search for data sets, but also prepare and provision the data sets. These capabilities are essential for data analysts and scientists to quickly find and use the data they need for analytics. 

Collaboration Increases Productivity and Cross-Team Insights 

The DataOps practice takes into consideration tools and processes as well as people. One of the core pillars of DataOps is collaboration. Not only is data siloed within organizations, knowledge about that data and its analytics value is also siloed within teams or lines of business. 

With a DataOps platform, users are able to tag and annotate data so that other users easily understand a data set and how it’s been used before improving knowledge sharing and data confidence. Users can also easily share and recommend data sets to improve communication across teams. 

Take Action: Consider adding collaboration features to your data platform to foster a culture of continuous improvement of a company’s data assets. 

Build Your DataOps Foundation with DXC Technology and Zaloni’s Crisis-Ready Solution 

DXC Technology and Zaloni’s  joint solution quickly sets you up for data and analytics success. Whether you are just starting or are in the early stages of developing your analytics environment, this solution provides DXC’s advanced analytics platform with Zaloni’s Arena DataOps platform for powerful data management and DataOps capabilities that accelerate data insights. 

The end-to-end system connects people, processes and pipelines. It can be implemented in a variety of environments from on-prem to hybrid, cloud or multi-cloud. The solution reduces time to analytics from months to days, improving decision-making, unlocking new business opportunities and reducing costs by up to 80%. 

To learn more about the crisis-ready solution from DXC and Zaloni contact us to set up a meeting to discuss your current challenges and how our solution can help. 

about the author

Annie Bishop

Annie Bishop is Zaloni’s Senior Product Marketing Manager with experience and expertise in technology solutions and product marketing. Before her four years with Zaloni, she worked with companies ranging from IBM to Macy’s.