Open Data Initiative: What it means to your Enterprise Business | OnActuate
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In today’s business world, it’s no secret that data is the currency that fuels operational change and growth—but even the fastest-scaling organization knows that when customer data remains siloed or segmented, its impact is severely lessened. And with data being collected and stored in so many disparate systems, what shall an organization to do? 

Enter the Open Data Initiative. The partnership announced at the 2018 Microsoft Ignite conference, brought together three of the world’s biggest cloud computing heavyweights in Adobe, SAP, and Microsoft to commit to new standards in data interoperability and portability. The goal? To eliminate data silos within organizations in better service of the end customer. 

The initiative marks a quantum leap forward for businesses of any size when it comes to gaining visibility into operational data and impacting the end-to-end customer journey—but what exactly does it mean for you? 

  • A Better Customer Experience 

Without a doubt, we’re living in the age of the customer—and as customer needs and expectations have evolved, organizations have evolved to meet them through customization, personalization, and the ability to scale relationships based on collected data. The problem, however, is that in any customer-interfacing organization, customer data exists across many different touchpoints, none of which have historically communicated with each other particularly well. 

The Open Data Initiative changes all of that and will now underpin an era of Digital Transformation for today’s customer-focused businesses. To deliver incredible customer experiences that set your business apart from the competition, you need customer data that is real-time, intelligent and predictive, and able to deliver relevant and personalized customer experiences at scale. 

With the Open Data Initiative, you’re able to easily connect and correlate data across internal and external silos such as mobile and web habits, customer transactions, IoT usage, social, advertising, and marketplace, to deliver unique, one-of-a-kind experiences to each and every customer you serve, significantly elevating your customer experience.

  • Control Over Your Data  

Data standards also equate to better data control, both for your organization and for the end user, your customer—and in an era with mounting data privacy and ownership concerns, the importance of this cannot be overstated. 

Recently, due to the lack of unified data standards across solutions, it was necessary for enterprise businesses to store customer data in many different external platforms. Not only has data been rendered ineffective by silos, but it’s also been necessary to be duplicated and separated—rendering your expensive software solutions the digital equivalent of carbon paper. The more copies of data that exist on external systems, the greater the risk that data could be compromised in the event of a data breach or leak. 

Not only does the initiative give organizations complete and direct control over their customer data, but it also offers end consumers greater transparency and visibility into the data being collected, offering them greater control over how their data is stored and utilized through one set of simple, accessible controls. 

Lastly, being powered by the Microsoft Azure Data and AI layer gives enterprise businesses the incredible opportunity to leverage real-time data insights and advanced analytics within a secure environment.

  • Expandability 

With unified data standards come expanded options in third-party services that can be plugged into the broader ecosystem and, looking to the future, a greater variety of options that will better suit your business needs, whatever they may be. 

It’s easier than ever before for developers to extend solutions based on an open and interoperable data standard—and a rapidly growing partner ecosystem ensures that solutions can not only be built more rapidly than ever but also deployed within your enterprise quickly and easily, significantly reducing overhead and allowing you to derive value and achieve results faster. 

The opportunity for enterprise businesses is immense—with one unified data standard across three of the world’s largest enterprise software providers, the options now available to Microsoft, Adobe, and SAP customers in terms of partner solutions and third-party offerings that easily communicate with each other and share data cross-platform is unparalleled. 

Fuel Growth and Change with Data

For enterprise businesses, the complaint is rarely that they’re suffering from a lack of data—rather, how that data is accessed, shared, secured, and utilized. The Open Data Initiative is an absolute game changer that will revolutionize how businesses leverage data in pursuit of a more unified and seamless experience in service of their customers—and for enterprises that want to lead rather than lag behind the competition, there has never been a greater opportunity to shift to a customer-focused, data-driven mindset. 

Find out more about how Microsoft’s Open Data Initiative can help you scale your enterprise moving forward. Start the conversation by booking a short meeting with one of our team members today.

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