Organisations all over the world are looking to their internal assets to gain an edge over their competitors and use to their advantage. However, the very same organisations are also drowning in data, unable to effectively mine their data for insight that could ultimately support this objective and improve business outcome.
In a recent Iron Mountain study with IDC on current archiving strategies, the majority of responding organisations (76%) said they are already extracting the maximum value from their archives. But, in actual fact, data archiving has become a major blind spot for businesses.
There’s a real disconnect between the value people think they’re currently realising from their archives and the potential additional revenue they could stand to gain by simply managing their data more effectively.
>See also: Lack of social media archiving exposes UK businesses to risk
Organisations of all sizes and across all industries can expect to see an increase of up to $10 million in revenue and savings by revisiting their archives to fulfil business objectives, according to Iron Mountain. But as little as 38% of companies actually use archives for business analysis.
Data archiving isn’t just about meeting legal and compliance requirements. By utilising a readily available resource, businesses can offer better services to customers. Organisations with advanced archiving processes can stand to gain savings and additional revenue streams.
However, the majority are not truly leveraging the power of their archives. To bridge the disconnect between perception and reality, here are four things organisations need to evaluate to effectively mine their date archives for insight.
1. Chief data officer
Hiring a chief data officer (CDO) can enable a business to over see and easily derive value from the data archive, while working closely with the COO and CIO to set long-term business and data strategies.
2. Information maps
The development and utilisation of information maps of all data sources and repositories (and their values) across the organisation enables the CDO to understand how information is used across the board, in turn making it easier to fulfil long-term business and data strategies.
3. Archiving strategy
By implementing a holistic and consistent archiving strategy, the CDO is able to address data retention schedules, use cases, realise the value of data, and understand necessary accessibility needs, whilst considering the cost of archiving.
4. Third-party vendors
Consider working with a third-party vendor with specific expertise to help optimise the archiving solution while freeing up internal IT resources to focus on more strategic and innovative work.
These need to be critically addressed by businesses in today’s data driven economy, in which the key to success or failure comes down to how effectively data can be managed and how quickly a business can act on that insight gained from the analysis of data.
Sourced from Phil Greenwood, Iron Mountain
