We recently spoke to an insurance organization about their data. They made a strategic decision not to implement any reports, dashboards, or data analytics for another 6-months.
The reason? 6-months ago this organization had changed accounting system and felt there was no point leveraging data until there’s a full year of data in the new accounting system. This begs the question, what about data older than 6-months? Has this organization abandoned all historic data in the accounting system change?
In software development the term “extensible” is often used. The term refers to the future ability to extend the use or function of something; generally an application or code in this case.
It may not be applicable now but any business critical tool should (must) be extensible. Accounting, HR, CRM, production, inventory management, the list goes on & on and they must all continue to operate and provide value into the future.
This is where a data lake really shines. Business intelligence (BI) leveraging a data lake will continue to operate unaffected when your business applications change or are temporarily inaccessible.