What is Data Sharing + Key Benefits for Your Business

We all know that sharing is caring, yet when it comes to data sharing, there’s not a lot of love going around.   

Despite the fact that studies prove the value of data sharing (a Gartner study found that organizations that promote data sharing will outperform their peers on most business metrics), it’s still a difficult issue for companies to master. Why?   

Let’s dive into what data sharing is exactly, why it’s important, and some best practices to enable data sharing at your company.   

What is Data Sharing?   

Data sharing is the practice of enabling access to your data within your company or with external stakeholders, too. Data sharing is about removing silos and barriers to access data.

Instead, data sharing encourages openness, transparency, and accessibility to data from anyone who needs it.

This open flow of information allows companies to:

• Truly see all their data from different departments and technologies
• Share information
• Gain better insights than ever before  

Data Sharing Benefits: Why Data Share?   

Businesses are under increased pressure to differentiate themselves from traditional competitors and new, digitally-savvy entrants.

One of the keys to gaining a competitive edge is in your data – the only challenge is, how do you access your data and gain insights that can lead to tangible improvements for your company? It’s challenging to do so when everyone is looking at their data in silos.

This is where data sharing comes in.   

Data sharing enables everyone to access the same data, which helps reduce misinformation and ensures you can see the big picture of what’s going on in your business. It reduces inefficiencies, increases collaboration, and opens up new opportunities for business leaders.

According to Gartner, “Data and analytics leaders who shared data externally saw more measurable business outcomes than those who did not share”.
Essentially, data sharing can provide the business with the right data at the right time, build trust and ultimately deliver real tangible benefits.    

What Data Sharing Looks Like   

Our first-grade teachers were right: sharing is caring. So how do we embark on data sharing exactly? Here’s what the future could hold:   

• Openness & transparency: All stakeholders would have access to the data, building openness and transparency amongst teams and departments.  
• Flexibility: You’d be able to produce new analytics reports better and handle ad-hoc requests because you don’t have to request access to another department’s information.   
• Unified view: You’d create a single, unified view of your business, so all departments were accessing the same information rather than viewing data in silos.  
• Speed: You’d be able to expand the scope of analysis that data consumers can conduct.   
• Future technologies: You’d be able to embark on future technologies, like machine learning and artificial intelligence, now, and be prepared with data-driven insights and recommendations.   

Data Sharing Best Practices

In the Gartner report previously mentioned, it found that data analytics teams who increased data sharing were 1.7 times more effective at demonstrating business value to their stakeholders.   

By keeping these best practices in mind, you can move your data analytics journey forward and deliver measurable business outcomes early and often.   

1. Foster a culture that encourages “data-sharing” instead of “data-ownership.”  
2. Recognize the inherent biases that affect data sharing.   
3. Prepare your environment for data sharing – establish data management strategies.   
4. Set a powerful example – leadership should encourage a data-sharing mentality.  

Data sharing is about much more than just data sharing.

It’s about creating a culture of openness and transparency.

That’s why what sets you up for success when it comes to data sharing is your data-driven culture. If your leadership is not instilling a data-driven culture from the top down, then it’s impossible to truly enable data sharing.

You need the culture first, and then the data sharing will follow.   

Not sure if you have a data-driven culture?

Download our checklist to answer three questions and find out.