Why Almost Every Business Needs A Digital Data Architecture

Data architecture characterises the process of managing data, from collection to its transformation, distribution, and consumption. It defines the flowing of data through data storage systems and its blueprint. Thus, digital data architecture refers to the design and organisation of data within a digital business system.

Businesses can gain efficient data access and management, enhance their data quality and safety, and expect better growth and scalability through a well-structured digital data architecture. It is essential for data processing operations and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

What is Digital Data Architecture?

Digital data architecture is a critical element of any organisation’s IT strategy since it guarantees the proper management, storage, and utilisation of data to healthily sustain business operations and help in the decision-making process. A data architecture must be designed keeping in mind the requirements of the business— data architects and engineers utilise this to determine the respective data models and underlying data structures that support it. At Growth Jockey, we ensure the efficient usage of databases, data warehouses, and other data storage systems and the execution of data governance and proper management policies.

As the foundation of any data strategy, data architecture aims to deliver information on how a company’s data is obtained, transported, stored, queried, and secured. Since data architecture reinforces agility, it qualifies your company to acclimate quickly to the ever-changing business environment and industry. A particular kind of data architecture can foster agility to meet business demands.

A crucial element of digital data architecture is the design of a [logical data model that specifies the structure of data elements and their relationships. This conceptual representation of the data and relationships within an organisation can assist the physical design of the data storage systems. A logical data model must have three main components:

• Entities: Each entity denotes a set of things, concepts, persons, or anything else pertinent to a business.

• Relationships: Every relationship formed signifies an affiliation between two of the above entities

• Attributes: Each attribute is defined as a descriptive piece, characteristic or any other information that can further clarify an entity.

Thus, the entity-relationship diagrams display the relationships between different types of data.

At Growth Jockey, we also ensure to retain another important aspect of digital data architecture, which is the usage of data warehousing and business intelligence systems. Data warehousing involves the collection of data from a wide range of sources within a company into a single database to generate meaningful insights and analyses of a business.

This facilitates the decision-making process. Business intelligence systems like data visualisation tools are consequently utilised to present this data understandably. Digital data architecture also includes the execution of data governance and management policies.

What is the Importance of Digital Data Architecture?

Since digital technologies regularly transform consumer behaviour, markets and enterprises, many CXOs are concentrating on acquiring leadership roles. The capacity to employ the latest technologies quickly with changing demands is mandatory for most businesses. Products demand to be delivered quickly and safely. Thus, a digital marketing strategy inclusive of modern technologies in an integrated manner is of utmost importance to businesses. Global brands like Netflix, Amazon, etc., are “born digital” as their business models are inherently digital by design. They have set the bar high, and consumer expectations are higher than ever. Thus, data exchange and data analytics must be done at a high-speed scale.

An inclusive view of clients, inventory, and promotions smoothens the proper functioning of online and physical operations. Obtaining real-time analytics about the flow of data across business functions and decisions is vital for true digital transformation. When the volume and velocity of data come into play, the importance of data architecture in facilitating these new business models is highlighted.

Essentially, data architecture can:

• Give an overall idea of what is happening in a company

• Give a better understanding of the company’s data

• Provide protocols for the movement of data from its source to the destination

• Ensure that the data is secure

• Empower companies to make data-driven decisions.

Why do you Need Digital Data Architecture?

As new data sources are constantly appearing through freshly emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Growth Jockey believes that good data architecture is unavoidable. Data must be manageable and useful, and supportive of data lifecycle management. Moreover, businesses can avoid duplicate data storage and maintain data quality through cleansing and deduplication. Modern data architectures also nourish the integration of data across domains, such as between different departments or geographical locations. The complexities of handling huge amounts of data can be avoided by storing data in one place.

Since data architecture ensures the flexibility, scalability, governance, security, and integrity of data, companies can create a successful digital ecosystem that is both secure and efficient. Thus, the principles of data architecture essentially focus on the following:

• Flexibility: Data architecture ensures the flexibility to adapt to any changes in the organisation, such as new business demands or technologies.

• Scalability: Data architecture is capable of scaling in order to meet the needs of the organisation as it grows.

• Data integrity: It goes without saying that integrity and consistency must be maintained across an organisation.

• Data security: any unwanted breaches or attacks can be protected by the measures included in data architecture.

• Data governance: Various policies and procedures according to different countries must be put in place within an organisation

What are the Types of Digital Data Architecture?

The two main types of data architecture include:

• Data fabrics: A data fabric is an architecture that primarily observes the automation of data integration, data engineering, as well as governance in a data value chain linking the provider and data consumer. A data fabric relies on the idea of ‘active metadata” and consequently uses mathematical and technical principles of the knowledge graph, semantics, data mining, and machine learning (ML) technology to identify different patterns in many kinds of metadata (for instance, logs, social, etc.). This powerful architecture can regularise data management practices and practicalities across cloud, on-premises, and edge devices.

• Data meshes: A data mesh is a decentralised data architecture that organises data by business domain. By employing a data mesh, companies need to understand that data is a product in its own right and not a by-product. This architecture enables end-users to smoothly access important data without transporting it to a data lake or data warehouse and without needing expert data teams to moderate the process.

Final Remarks: How does Digital Architecture Help Businesses?

Digital data architecture is soon becoming the structure of a company’s data management processes. Here at Growth Jockey, we believe in using and building strong, user-friendly data tools and systems. These will help a business platform achieve its goals and gain exponential financial success. Not only does data architecture ensure proper data storage, but it also takes care of data lineage, identifies data quality issues, and improves data value to make it more usable and understandable.

The necessities of digital data architecture rely on its ability to unlock the value of business data. Data architecture encourages marketing teams to analyse and collect the most accurate data within the business. Digital architecture for business is a core data management practice that helps the analysis of customer interaction data and provides insight into the same. Thus, any modern business needs digital data architecture as the backbone of data applications.

At Growth Jockey, we assist you to build your data architecture to become adaptable, resilient, and competitive in the future.

At Growth Jockey, we are committed to building customised solutions that effectively address the critical challenges faced by our clients across diverse industries. Regardless of the size of your company, whether it's a small-scale enterprise or a large corporation, you can now optimise your IT architecture. Take the decisive step towards unlocking the next level of growth for your brand by contacting us today!