What are Data Silos, and How Can You Liberate Your Data?

Intuition is, of course, good when making the best decisions for your company. But the truth is, we live in a data-driven world. It is impossible for organizations to make the right decisions without data. To stay in the market, you must base and support every decision you make with data.

Data comes in many different forms and from many various sources. This makes data management very difficult. Therefore, you may encounter data-related issues from time to time. These problems can be very diverse: human errors, outdated data, and, of course, data silos.

Data silos are a significant obstacle to your decision-making and risk your company’s growth. Hence, identifying data silos and knowing how to solve them is essential for your company’s future.

All right, now let’s go over everything from the beginning. What are these data silos?

What are data silos?

A data silo is a collection of data that one team or department can access but not the rest of the organization.

By this definition, data silos may seem harmless at first glance. However, data silos cause disruptions in interdepartmental collaboration and information sharing. Data quality suffers due to inconsistencies in data in different silos. Also, data silos create a severe lack of transparency and trust within your company.

How does data become siloed?

The most common scenarios for data silos to occur in organizations are:

#1 Siloed organizational structure

Sometimes the biggest reason for data silos is that the company structure consists of teams that work independently. Of course, each department has policies and procedures tailored to its needs. But if all of these are too disconnected, it is not surprising that the data is also disconnected from each other.

#2 Company growth

Sometimes the rapid growth of companies makes data proliferation challenging. For example, if your company is based in several geographic locations, you will have many offices, departments, and therefore a lot of data stored worldwide. This can cause regionally stored data to be abstracted from the overall company.

Not only that, but your company’s growth may cause competition among your employees to heat up. Some teams may not want to hand over data to other teams because they want to maintain control.

#3 Technological problems

Sometimes, the main problem that causes data silos for companies is related to their technologies. Without the right technology, data cannot easily travel between departments. Companies need technological solutions that will enable rapid information transfer between departments.

Additionally, if the technology used by the company has a steep learning curve or is too complex, it can cause problems for these companies to implement the technology in all departments. Some teams may be better trained than others. This may result in other teams being unable to access the same information easily.

Why do you need to get rid of data silos?

Yes, I have stated many times in this article that silos can negatively affect your company, but how exactly?

Here are a few problems that will help you understand why you must take action against data silos:

Incomplete and inconsistent datasets

Data is a company’s most valuable asset. Data silos, on the other hand, limit the accessibility of this data, reducing the value you can get from it. 

In addition, the more the data is in a silo, the more likely it is to become unusable. This can lead to wrong decisions in your business strategies.

Data silos also compromise compatibility between data. This disconnection in data sets can cause conflicting decisions between departments.

Wasted storage

Since different teams cannot access each other’s data that’s stored in data silos, there’s a chance that the same data is being stored over and over again. Such a situation wastes storage space and, as a consequence, constantly increases the cost of IT.

Less collaborative environment

As long as data silos exist, each team works independently with its own data sets. Why? Because they only have access to their own dataset, it’s their only resource. This creates fragmented organizations with departments that cannot make decisions together. It becomes difficult for departments to work together on projects, making it impossible to share a common corporate spirit.

Data silos make things difficult not only for teams but also for managers. Data silos cause disconnect, preventing everyone from the technical team to business users from focusing on the big picture. In this case, it becomes challenging for managers to make data-based decisions and manage the operation as a whole. 

Bad customer experience

Multiple touchpoints make up the funnel of almost all companies. Customers interact with these channels at various stages of the customer journey.

When data is disconnected and isolated from each other due to data silos, this can lead to two fundamental problems in customer experience: Users may encounter repetitive or unrelated campaigns across different touchpoints. This negatively affects the credibility of your company. Or, you can quickly lose track of your customer. If you can’t track your user, it will be nearly impossible to guide them through the funnel.

Slower progress 

Data silos isolate data within teams rather than pushing teams to make joint data-based decisions. In such a situation, teams need to find where the data they need is located, access it manually, and then analyze it in case of a potential problem or a time of need. Therefore, the process takes a long time.

Worse still, in such a case, the data may be out of date when you reach it. This means you have to start all over again. This is a nightmare, especially when you need to make quick decisions.

How can HockeyStack liberate your data?

If your business is still not encouraging collaboration between teams,  you will probably have to deal with the problems created by data silos at least once.

So what should you do?

With HockeyStack, you can unify all your data with a single tool in minutes without typing any code.

Hockeystack allows you to combine all your data and easily track it from a single platform with dashboards that will enable you to uncover great insights.

From product to marketing and even sales, Hockeystack allows you to collect and analyze data from all your departments on customized dashboards. It collects all this data effortlessly in a single point, preventing data gaps between departments.

The disjointed data you collect in tools you need for different purposes, such as CRM or email marketing, is another reason for data silos.

Hockeystack solves these problems too with the numerous integration possibilities it offers. You can easily prevent data breaks by gathering all these platforms under one roof with Hockeystack.

Start unifying your data today to break data silos and reap the full benefits of accurate and up to date data.

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