Data catalogs are borderline essential for modern-day businesses, and these tools are only becoming more advanced. Some modern data catalog tools take efficiency to the next level with AI, which can streamline and improve numerous data management workflows. In this article, we’ll take a look at AI-powered data catalogs and how they can benefit your business.
What Is an AI Data Catalog?
We know that a data catalog is a tool that provides organizations with a centralized depository for data that provides in-depth context with metadata and makes it easier for organizations to search and discover data. An AI data catalog utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to improve these processes by automating many of the processes for organizing, searching and managing data.
AI data catalogs can help automate metadata management, data lineage, data discovery and much more. Overall, it’s an upgrade to the modern data catalog that provides a myriad of benefits. Let’s take a look at some of those benefits next.
What Are the Benefits?
AI data catalogs offer a wide range of benefits for data-driven businesses. Here are some of the benefits you can expect if you implement an AI data catalog:
- Improved data discovery and management — AI data catalogs improve data discovery and make data management processes much more efficient. Using an AI-powered data catalog platform, you can automate tasks like data tagging, identification, organization and more. Teams can also get the relevant data they need in a fraction of the time.
- Improved data quality — AI-powered data catalogs can help improve data quality by identifying inconsistencies, data errors and duplicates automatically. These processes can be completely automated, making it easier for your data teams to focus on other tasks.
- Improved data governance — AI-powered data platforms can automate data lineage and documentation tasks to help organizations remain compliant with their industry data regulations. Automated data lineage makes it much easier to track and monitor the entire lifecycle of data, and time-consuming documentation tasks no longer have to eat up hours of the workweek.
- Better insights — AI-powered data catalog platforms enable organizations to get better data-driven insights in several ways. Improving data quality certainly helps, but AI platforms can also allow nontechnical users to use natural language search to discover data faster and without help from the data team. This frees up time for the data team and empowers business users in your organization to make more data-driven decisions in a fraction of the time. It also makes collaboration easier.
In short, AI-powered data catalog tools can be powerful tools for data management teams, and they can be well worth implementing in your data management stack.
How Artificial Intelligence Works for Data Catalogs
Artificial intelligence has revolutionized the way data catalogs are managed, making it easier and faster to organize, categorize and discover data. AI-powered data catalogs use artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to mimic human intelligence and automate numerous data management tasks.
Artificial intelligence is capable of providing in-depth insights and identifying patterns in data, which leads to better business outcomes. Additionally, AI data catalogs can harness the power of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to make these tools more accessible.
Natural Language Processing allows users to input natural language prompts to ask questions and search for specific data. This allows even nontechnical users to leverage company data whenever and wherever they need to. No more clogged pipelines of data requests. Data discovery is now accessible to everyone.
Best Practices To Follow
Now that you understand the numerous benefits that an AI-powered data catalog can offer, you may be ready to implement one in your business. As with any technology, it can help to follow best practices to make the most out of your AI data catalog and ensure your team is prepared to utilize it.
- Evaluate your data — Before implementing a new data management tool, it’s always a good idea to assess your data assets and check data quality. While an AI-powered data catalog will undoubtedly help you improve your data quality, the integration can be more seamless if you start with clean and accurate data.
- Focus on training and user adoption — The implementation of an AI-powered data catalog involves a lot of stakeholders. Your data team will already be familiar with using data catalog tools, but your business users will also be able to utilize an AI-powered tool with NLP data discovery. It’s essential to make sure your teams are adopting the new technology and are trained on how to work it into their processes. Make sure to check back regularly to ensure these new tools are being utilized.
- Establish Clear Data Governance — To ensure the accuracy and relevance of the data within the catalog, it’s important to establish clear data governance processes and standards. This factors into the previous point of training users on the new tool. Make sure you clearly delineate data responsibilities and data owners, set data access controls and implement the necessary governance standards to maintain compliance and data integrity.
- Monitor and Analyze Usage — To optimize the benefits of the AI data catalog, it’s important to monitor and analyze usage patterns. This can help identify which data sets and use cases are most popular, which may need additional support and which can be retired or consolidated.
By following these best practices, data teams can ensure the successful adoption and usage of an AI data catalog and reap the maximum benefits.
Future Trends of AI for Data Teams
As the field of artificial intelligence continues to evolve, so do the possibilities for its application in data teams. Here are some future trends to watch out for:
- Further advancements in data discovery — AI has already advanced in leaps and bounds over recent years, and that trend looks to continue. AI will be able to empower data discovery like never before by offering predictive analytics, making smart suggestions for helpful searches and learning how each user utilizes data to better serve them insights.
- Natural language processing enhancements — Natural language processing reaches new heights every day, as the more information it takes in, the more it improves. Natural language processing will continue to improve over the years and become an integral part of data discovery.
- Predictive analytics — AI insights will further enhance predictive analytics. AI will be able to learn and analyze patterns that users may miss otherwise.
- Data visualization automation — AI data catalogs will also be able to help automate data visualizations to help users better understand and communicate their data findings.
As you can see, the future of AI for data teams is very bright. As technology advances and new possibilities emerge, organizations will increasingly rely on AI data catalogs to harness the power of their data and drive informed decision-making.
Try Secoda for Free
If you’re ready to try an AI-powered data catalog, Secoda is your answer. Secoda is an AI-powered data management platform for data search, cataloging, lineage, documentation and more. With Secoda, your team can use ChatGPT-powered search to discover data faster than ever before. Secoda enables you to automate numerous data management tasks too, making your team more productive and effective. If you’re ready to learn more about Secoda, try it for free and book a demo today.
