Data repositories allow your business to store information collected from a variety of different sources in a logical, organized way. These repositories can collect data from a single set or multiple databases, depending on how many data sources your business has.
Once this data is centralized in a repository, it can be shared and analyzed more easily by your teams. It also makes it easier for your data team to keep data secure and maintain data quality. When data is moved to a repository, it is also cleaned, formatted, and organized based on the type of repository and the parameters set by your data engineers.
Essentially, if you have multiple data sources with disparate information, you can make it much more accessible for a variety of reasons. Even non-data team members can use these repositories for reporting, dashboards, analytics, and more.
While data repositories aren’t necessarily perfect solutions, they’re a great way to avoid data duplication, missing data, and other problems that crop up with data analytics, collection, and reporting. This is just scratching the surface of the benefits a data repository can offer. In this blog, we’re going to take a deeper dive into the advantages of data repositories.
1. Have an easier onboarding process
To start, data repositories can make onboarding easier for new team members, especially members of your data team. The formatting and organization of your data repositories can make it easier for new data team members to understand your organizational structure and find the data they need to do their job.
Of course, data teams aren’t the only ones who benefit. Data repositories can contain any type of pertinent business information. This includes the training materials and onboarding processes for all of your teams and departments. With a data repository, you can ensure your training material data and onboarding data are fully updated, so everyone accessing this information is seeing the same thing.
Data repositories also make it easier for your new employees to access and query data to help them make data-driven decisions and compile reports. This brings us to the next benefit.
2. Help nontechnical users outside of the data team
While data team members are going to be able to navigate data repositories with ease, nontechnical users will also find data-related tasks much simpler. Data repositories are designed to organize and arrange data in an intuitive way. They maintain the quality and integrity of your data while also making sure that there isn’t missing information or duplicates when someone makes a data query.
This prevents confusion and accidental data errors for nontechnical users who might not catch them otherwise. Data repositories also make it easy for nontechnical users to navigate, query, and search for your business data in one place. Instead of having to jump around databases trying to find data from sources that they might not understand, they can easily learn how to use your data repository for the tasks they need it for. This also saves your data team time, since they don’t have to spend as much time answering questions from nontechnical users and finding data for them.
3. Make collaboration between teams simple
Having a data repository for your data sources makes it much simpler for your teams to collaborate. In a scenario where your teams are all pulling from their own data sources, collaborating and sharing data can quickly become complicated and messy. Your teams could be getting different information for the same questions, or there could be cases of duplicate data. It’s much easier if all of your team members are seeing the same data every time. This makes for far less confusion and much more time spent actually collaborating and working together.
With a data repository, your teams don’t have to waste time sending over their own data or making data queries and comparing analytics. They can simply look at the data repository, see the same thing other teams are seeing, and get back to collaborating without having to compare notes first. In short, data repositories can streamline all of these collaborative tasks and prevent a lot of headaches.
4. House all of your data in a central location
With a data repository, your data will always be located in one centralized location. When you have multiple data sources and disparate data sets, data silos can quickly become a problem. This leads to users getting different answers to their queries, duplicate data, and other errors that can affect reporting and data-driven decisions. It’s best for your team to have a single source of truth instead of various answers to each query.
When you have data silos and disconnected data, outdated or inaccurate data may pop up when users are searching for information. With a single centralized source of truth, you can eliminate these inconsistencies and ensure data accuracy. A centralized data repository also allows you to update data easily, meaning everyone with access to the data sees the same updated information.
5. Gain higher visibility and insight
Data repositories make your company data highly visible. All incoming data and metadata can be collected from your single source of truth, adding context to data. With the right tools, your team can even visualize the relationships between the data in your repository and the people who use it. You can gain insight into who owns data, what data is used by each team, and much more.
Additionally, you can get insight into what questions your teams are accessing and what data is most important for each team. By making your data more visible to all users and making it easy to search and access, you give your team more actionable insights that they can use.
Higher visibility and insight also help your data team improve data documentation, data governance, and data security.
6. Centralize data knowledge and discovery in one accessible repository
With one accessible repository, you can combine data knowledge and discovery in one centralized, easy-to-manage location. Data teams and nontechnical users will have speedy access to all of the data they need. With tools like Secoda, you can also combine features like a data dictionary, data catalog, data request, data management compliance, and more in one convenient place.
The right data repository tool can be a powerful addition to your data stack. You can empower your team to get even more out of your centralized data repositories. Data discovery can be much easier, with automatic documentation creation, column profiling, and other organizational tools to make it easier for your users to find and use the data they need. A centralized data repository ensures all data and requests go to the same place. Everything is searchable from the same data environment, and questions can be documented so future users can find the same answers faster.
The accessibility of a data depository also helps your business achieve data democratization. This not only ensures that every user in your business can access the data they need but also that they have sufficient data literacy and feel comfortable accessing the data and gaining insight from it. With a data repository, your users will have access to the data that’s important for their teams, but they’ll also learn how to make the most of the data and glean the most actionable insights from it in the process. In short, a data depository is more than just a central place to store data; it’s a tool for helping your team use data the right way and ensuring they always have the best data available.
If you’re looking for a way to improve your data repository capabilities, Secoda is here to help.
Try Secoda for free
Secoda gives everyone on your team the confidence to use data. With Secoda, you can easily put all of your data in a single space and organize your data knowledge in a searchable, intuitive portal. In other words, Secoda is your data team’s second brain. Using Secoda, you get all of the above benefits and more. Onboard new team members faster, get more visibility into your data, make data governance easier for your data team, and improve general data literacy in your company as a whole.
You can also keep data knowledge throughout your company consistent with our central data dictionary. Automate business terms, identify subject matter experts on your team based on usage patterns, and easily scale documentation using crowdsourcing and collaboration.
If you want to provide easy data access to your teams, aggregate data across all of your teams, bridge your company’s data gaps, save your data team time, and easily search for data across all data sources, Secoda is your solution.
Secoda is the most user-friendly and intuitive data cataloging and discovery tool out there. Try adding Secoda to your data stack for free to see if it’s a good fit for your company. Click below to get started.
