Summary

There’s no doubt that the effective use of data is becoming ever more critical to organizations. No longer is it only expected to drive internal reporting and KPIs, but the use of data is driving key products both internally and externally to customers.

However, while the tools we have available are better than ever, the architecture of the data platforms that underpin all of this have not evolved alongside them. Our data platforms continue to be hampered by a bottleneck that restricts the accessibility of the data. They are unable to provide the reliable, quality data that is needed to those teams who need it when it is needed.

We need to stop working around these problems within the data platform and address them at the source.

We need an architecture that sets expectations around what data is provided, how to use it, and how reliable it will be.

We need a data culture that treats data as a first-class citizen, where responsibility is assigned to those who generate the data.

And so, in the next chapter, we’ll introduce data contracts, a new architecture pattern designed to solve these problems, and provide the foundations we need to empower true data-driven organizations that realize the value of their data.