Your data strategy should be as unique as your business. The evolution of your company’s data strategy influences everything in your organization from products to marketing to culture. Having full control over every input and output, as well as guiding your data to work for you at every step, is the only way to lead your industry and market. That’s why mastering data autonomy is so crucial for success.

What is data autonomy? 

To have data autonomy means to have complete control over your data and your data strategy. That includes having control over where and how your data is generated, stored, organized, used, bought, sold, and shared. Data autonomy is the practice of ensuring that your data is protected and secure, accessible and shareable, and applied effectively. 

Maintaining control over your data and the application of that data is one of the most important duties of an organization. To be successful, you’ll want to have end-to-end authority over where your data is coming from and where it is going.  

How does data autonomy help you master your data strategy? 

The way your organization collects, applies, and distributes data should fit your organization’s unique goals and challenges. No one data strategy fits every enterprise. You must shape the direction and velocity of your data strategy in order to achieve progress and success. That can only be done effectively if an organization maintains complete control at every step of the way. To ensure that you are maintaining control over your data and data strategy effectively, you’ll want to:

•  Monitor data collection

Your organization is only as good as the data it collects. As you generate or ingest data, make sure that you are taking note of exactly where it is coming from, how it was collected, and how trustworthy it is. Don’t input garbage or you will get garbage output. You want to ensure that the data you are feeding your models is quality data that you can trust. 

One way to ensure that you are collecting quality data is to put the appropriate checks and balances in place for first-party data collection. Attach tracking pixels to your website and advertisements, ensure that you are asking all the right questions on customer surveys, and don’t let any information slip through the cracks. Another way to ensure quality data collection is to acquire quality first-and-third-party data from trustworthy external sources. This can be done by negotiating direct data transactions with organizations that you trust or ingesting data through reliable data collaboration platforms.

• Protect your data 

To have full data autonomy is to maintain a protected and organized storage of your data. It is vital that all data is protected and secure because, by protecting that data, you are protecting your company, your employees, your customers, your products, your shareholders, and so forth. This means that no other parties or organizations are able to interfere with your data, unless you want them to. 

In order to do this, you must keep your data secure with end-to-end encryption and auditing. Make sure you have security access set up so that only authorized individuals can access your data and no other parties are able to. Always monitor your data and who has been accessing it, and ensure they are following protocol when doing so.

• Ensure data compliance 

With complete control of your data and data strategy, you are able to ensure compliance with federal laws and regulations as well as ensuring that your data adheres to your own internal compliance policies. It’s important to establish organization when you are generating data and it’s important to set up the rules and regulations that will ensure your data is legal, safe, and secure. 

To guarantee your data is compliant, it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest laws and regulations regarding data generation, data protection, and data commercialization. It’s also important to constantly ensure that your data is meeting your company’s own set of ethics and standards. 

• Map and execute the fate of your data

Your data has endless potential. Having full control over your data strategy means that your organization alone should be able to make the necessary decisions about how your data is collected or generated, where your data is stored, who has access to it, and whether or not you want to share that data outside of your organization. 

These decisions should be based on your organization’s unique structure and objectives. Determine the challenges your organization faces, the questions you are trying to answer, and the goals you are trying to achieve. Then determine what data could help lead your company to the right solutions and evolutions, where you can find that data, and how you can apply that data. How you shape your data strategy will be extremely distinctive, which is why it’s so important to maintain control of the data that fuels it.

Within your organization, data is pivotal to marketing campaigns, product development, customer experience, supply chain management, and more. If you decide you want to share that data between departments in a controlled data ecosystem, you can direct and open that access. If you decide you want to monetize your data by selling it to interested external parties, you can decide where that data is sold to. If you decide you want to keep it top-secret within one department, you can do that too. 

But maintaining control over both your data and your data strategy means that you must have access to the right data, the right tools, and the right budget. This can be difficult to accomplish if you aren’t aware of the cutting-edge options that are available to organizations as data science and data commerce grow and expand.

Narrative’s data collaboration platform gives you the autonomy tools you need to take control of your data strategy 

To retain strategic control over your data, employing a data collaboration platform like Narrative is one of the best things you can do. A data collaboration platform automates and simplifies that most frustrating and expensive aspects of acquiring, sharing, and distributing data. Instead of going through a bunch of middle-men, you’ll have full control and ownership over the system of record and self-service tools offered to you. Narrative empowers organizations by allowing them to maintain strategic control without requiring them to sacrifice tons of time and money or outsource to firms whose incentives may be misaligned.

With Narrative’s custom controls, you can set up the rules that work for your particular strategy and priorities. You can choose to share, buy, or sell data on your own terms. Define which participants you want to work with, set your own price (or lack thereof) as a seller or your own budget as a buyer, and run your data strategy based on your specifications. You can test, measure, and optimize with ease.

Narrative also allows you to negotiate private data deals. You’ll be able to choose only the buyers and sellers that you want to work with and transact data on Narrative’s open marketplace or negotiate your own private deals. You'll always be in control of your specific terms and conditions.

Narrative’s new forecasting solution also allows you to make decisions based on real-time data availability. As a seller, you can update availability by using custom filters and by setting your own price. As a buyer, you can see the exact availability before you buy. For both buyers and sellers, the ability to forecast maximizes the value of your data strategy.

Take control of your data strategy today. Get in contact with our experts.