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The data platform is your organisation’s backbone in today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving technological landscape. It is the foundation upon which your data-driven decisions are made, and this platform’s integrity, efficiency, and reliability directly impact your business outcomes. Continual improvement is critical for ensuring that your data platform remains robust, secure, and adaptive to changing needs. This article will explore the benefits of adopting a continual improvement approach to managing and evolving your data platform.

First, let us deal with the Elephant in the room as far as Continual Improvement is concerned. Continual Improvement is the ongoing process of evaluating and enhancing a process or element of the organisation. When applied to your data platform, the goal is to identify areas of inefficiency or underperformance and implement strategies to continually optimise and improve these areas. Continual Improvement activities are intentionally small and limited in scope, ideally giving a simple “Yes” or “No” success criteria, meaning they can be rolled back quickly. These “failed” changes are still Improvements, as you know and understand more about the updated area. This holistic approach ensures that every aspect of your organisation consistently advances and adapts to new challenges and opportunities.

One of the primary benefits of Continual Improvement on your data platform is the ability to enhance performance. As data volumes grow and user demands increase, your platform must be capable of handling the load efficiently. Continual improvement involves regularly assessing performance metrics, identifying bottlenecks, and implementing optimisations.

Improving query performance is essential for ensuring users can access the data they need quickly and efficiently. This can involve query rewriting, calculation updates, or aggregation staging. You can reduce latency and improve the overall user experience by continually monitoring performance and making iterative improvements.

Improved Data Quality and Accuracy

Data quality is paramount for making informed and accurate decisions. Continual improvement is often the only way to efficiently tackle emergent data challenges i.e. aborted / unexpected data values deep within datasets. A robust issue identification and remediation process will help maintain high data quality standards by implementing improvements to data validation, cleansing and enrichment activities.

The benefit is that you can identify and rectify errors, inconsistencies, and redundancies. This ensures your data remains accurate and reliable, crucial for analytics and decision-making processes.

Data enrichment is the process of enhancing data with additional context or information, making it more valuable for analysis. Continual improvement in this area can involve integrating external data sources, updating data models, and employing machine learning techniques to derive new insights.

Enhanced Security and Compliance

Security and compliance are critical considerations for any data platform. Continual improvement processes help ensure your platform remains secure and compliant with industry regulations.

Regular security audits allow you to identify and address vulnerabilities in your data platform. This proactive approach helps prevent security breaches and protects sensitive data from unauthorised access.

Continual improvement involves staying current with industry regulations and ensuring your data platform complies with these standards. This can include updating policies, implementing new technologies, and conducting regular compliance assessments.

Increased Usability and User Satisfaction
A user-friendly data platform ensures that users can effectively interact with and derive value from your data. Continual improvement processes focus on enhancing usability and user satisfaction.

Gathering user feedback and incorporating it into the design and functionality of your data platform is crucial for enhancing usability. Continual improvement involves soliciting feedback, making iterative design changes, and testing new features to ensure the platform meets user needs.

Providing comprehensive user training and support is essential for maximising the value of your data platform. Continual improvement involves regularly updating training materials, offering ongoing support, and ensuring that users have the knowledge and resources needed to use the platform effectively.

Innovation and Staying Ahead of the Curve

The technological landscape constantly evolves, and staying ahead is essential for maintaining a competitive edge. Continual improvement processes help ensure your data platform remains innovative and adaptive to new technologies and trends.

Continual improvement involves evaluating and adopting new technologies to enhance your data platform, from sampling and moving into areas of Fabric now vs. next year to selecting what new platform features to roll out and when. By staying at the forefront of technological advancements, you can ensure that your platform remains cutting-edge and capable of meeting future needs. The incremental nature of Continual Improvement also means that decisions are rapid, and even if they are “No, not at this time”, an understanding is normally gained as to what would be required to change that answer and initiate a re-evaluation.

The benefits of a Culture of Innovation

At the heart of Continual Improvement is the belief that failure is as important as success. In fact, within the context of Continual Improvement, the only way to fail would be not to learn anything from an iteration. This acceptance and acknowledgement that rolling back an update is not a personal failure encourages a culture of innovation within your organisation. This involves fostering an environment where employees are encouraged to experiment, share ideas, and collaborate on new initiatives. Promoting innovation can drive continual improvement and ensure that your data platform remains dynamic and forward-thinking.

Continual improvement processes also contribute to cost efficiency and resource optimisation. By regularly evaluating and optimising your data platform, you can reduce costs and ensure that resources are used effectively.

Regularly assessing and optimising your data platform can help identify areas for reducing operational costs. This can involve consolidating resources, optimising infrastructure, and implementing cost-saving technologies.

Continual improvement involves ensuring that resources are used effectively and efficiently. This can include optimising storage solutions, improving data management practices, and leveraging cloud resources to maximise resource utilisation.

Stakeholder Engagement

A reliable and continually improving data platform builds trust and credibility with stakeholders, including employees, customers, and partners. You can build confidence in your organisation’s data capabilities by demonstrating a commitment to maintaining and enhancing your data platform.

Continual improvement processes involve maintaining transparency and accountability in managing your data platform. This includes regularly reporting on improvements, promptly addressing issues, and ensuring stakeholders are informed about the platform’s performance and enhancements.

A data platform that consistently delivers high performance, security, and usability builds a positive reputation for your organisation. Continual improvement helps ensure that your platform remains reliable and capable of meeting stakeholder expectations, enhancing your organisation’s reputation.

Continual Improvement vs Continual Service Improvement

It is essential to distinguish between Continual Improvement and Continual Service Improvement, as both concepts play a critical role in enhancing different aspects of your organisation. The only difference between the two is that the scope, Continual Service Improvement, comes from the IT Sector and so is traditionally scoped around the IT side of an Organisation only. At their heart, however, both rely on the same fundamental.

The selection of that mechanism and tooling to use for managing your data platform will often come from the IT side of your organisation, as they will be heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the internal systems. It is, therefore, vitally important for both sides to agree on clear roles and responsibilities.

Conclusion

Continual improvement is essential for ensuring your data platform remains robust, secure, and adaptive to changing needs. By regularly assessing and optimising performance, data quality, security, usability, and innovation, you can enhance the overall effectiveness of your data platform and ensure that it continues to deliver value to your organisation. Additionally, continual improvement processes contribute to cost efficiency, resource optimisation, and building trust and credibility with stakeholders. Embracing a culture of continual improvement is key to maintaining a competitive edge and driving long-term success.

Geordie Consulting uses tools from the Microsoft Power Platform to enhance continuous improvement processes significantly. Organisations can achieve higher data consistency and accuracy levels by integrating data from diverse business applications into a cohesive and manageable platform. Services such as enabling users to generate custom reports using Power BI and Excel, utilising Semantic Models for uniform data analysis, and enhancing user autonomy through tools like Copilot are essential in promoting data agility. Comprehensive process documentation and ongoing support are critical in maximising the business value derived from data, ensuring that the insights gained are actionable and aligned with the organisation’s strategic objectives. These practices foster a data-driven culture that supports informed decision-making and drives business success.