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Accessing and sharing internal data effectively in a business is about more than just making it easier to retrieve documents. It is also a chance to form a platform for collaboration and promote innovation. This is an area where most businesses have major potential for growth. Here is our list of the 4 perhaps most important values of sharing internal data within a business.
Access to internal data has never been more important in a world where most everything happens digitally – and fast. The exponential growth also suggests that this is a need that will not disappear anytime soon; the total amount of data in the world has already doubled from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 74 zettabytes in 2021. This is expected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025 (Forbes, 2018). To help put those numbers in perspective; one zettabyte equals one trillion gigabytes.
Furthermore, 80% of this data is so called “unstructured data” (CIO.com, 2019). That means data needs to be structured in order to produce knowledge from it. There is a lot of knowledge in the documents a company possesses. If a business does not have efficient software to extract this knowledge quickly, that business will need to allocate many resources like manpower to keep up with their competition that has that software in place already.
Sharing data is key to success.
When that much unstructured data is stored in a single silo, meaning a closed storage system, the knowledge discovery goes to a halt. The search engine incorporated in the computer cannot locate all the data that lies in multiple folders, emails, and documents across repositories and different systems or applications, nor can the incorporated search engine read different formats within those programs. As a result, users need to access many systems separately, and the information stored is mostly kept hidden from co-workers.
The need for a solution to these changes and challenges will not go away any time soon. If you still do not quite grasp the extent of the potential for growth for your business, then let us help you move a step along the way... Here are 4 ways sharing internal data can bring value to a company:
1. Preserving knowledge and bridging knowledge gaps
In light of the pandemic, when businesses lost employees and reduced resources due to financial restraint, information was also lost. Access to documents and data was lost, and knowledge was missing.
The time it takes to recreate documents and send out information across the business is valuable time companies are paying for. Preserving knowledge digitally has never been more important.
2. Protecting sensitive information
An efficient platform for accessing data not only gives access to data across different silos from a single access point, it also allows for acting on this data to transform it to useful knowledge for the team. Such a solution provides tools for collaboration while also protecting sensitive information.
Sensitive information or data that contains personal information is stored in many documents spread across a company. How does a company protect information that they have lost track of, or that they did not know existed? Access to and sharing internal data is the only way to gain control over personal and sensitive information.
3. Maximizing resources and efficiency
Granting ease of access and the ability to collaborate on company data reduces costs, time and knowledge gaps. When your team is not spending unnecessary time searching for documents, or recreating lost documents, they can spend their time doing more important things, like actually working on the document they needed.
No more spending the whole day waiting for coworkers to send a document, or being delayed on a project due to missing data.
4. Boosting innovation
Sharing data not only reduces costs. It also helps create a “hive mind”: a state where thoughts, ideas and opinions from a group of individuals collectively transcends the sum of the individuals, creating a larger and more efficient “mind”. Ideas start forming.
When one department can share knowledge internally or across the team, new solutions arise, which paves way for more innovation. This allows businesses to better allocate resources to maximize efficiency and move the company forward quickly. This is why sharing data within a business is key to success.