Philip Miller, co-founder, Solidatus
To adapt to its challenges, the global pandemic is forcing businesses of every description to look carefully at their internal infrastructure and processes. Chief among these issues is that of data. It is a vital area for financial organisations to understand, especially when it comes to regulatory compliance. But there are additional benefits. Those who resolve to get to grips with their data management will also reap the rewards that come with streamlining wider business processes and emerge from COVID in better shape as a result.
There is no better time than now to reassess data and how it is working, stored, and used, and to put best practices in place. One recent study shows that some 65% of SME business owners across the US, China, UK, Germany, Taiwan and South Korea are looking to data management to aid their business’ COVID recovery[1]. The shadow of the pandemic is certain to loom over economies for some time to come, so those setting their sights on the future would be wise to consider reviewing how they manage this asset to get their businesses in a position conducive to riding the storms that future uncertainty may throw at them.
Most fintechs and larger financial institutions alike need industry-leading and flexible approaches to manage and map the vast pools they have of data simply because it is often an unending process. When we conceived Solidatus, Philip Dutton and I were both working at large multinational financial services firms and recognised the need to develop a solution that visualised and harnessed the vast networks, permissions and connections between the personal and corporate data we were handling. As these very same institutions face the growing challenge of operating cohesively during a global pandemic, their pools of data keep deepening, and so do the regulatory obligations that come with them. Examples are the United States’ CCPA and Brazil’s LGPD – both came into force in the last few months – only adding to the existing ‘burden’ of Europe’s GDPR.
Seeking to solve this growing complexity takes a different internal approach. The Solidatus platform is a simple, intuitive, and flexible cloud-based application that enables the rapid discovery, understanding and visualisation of how data impacts an organisation. It quantifies the data economy while also delivering sustainable, enterprise-wide consistency of understanding through straightforward integration of lineage, data dictionaries and business glossaries into existing structures. It effectively allows organisations to develop their own data landscapes, crowdsource metadata, agree terminology, and analyse data usage throughout their systems, and fast – helping businesses take a practical stance on management of their data while meeting demands for openness, transparency and traceability. It can be rolled out entirely via the cloud, so this can be executed while staff are working remotely.
By mapping and visualising data in this way, organisations reduce their exposure to risk – for firms responsible for the finances of people and of other organisations, this can be one of the most cost-saving and important responsibilities of all. One tiny slip in a data trail or missed connection in compliance could be catastrophic – as we understood after years spent in the industry. More often than not, these disasters came from completely avoidable stimuli but resulted in billions of dollars’ worth of cost.
Most importantly, businesses need to see how their data flows from one individual or department to the next so that they can model impending changes before they happen, in order to plan and forecast, without – literally – breaking the bank.
It is possible to do all of this quickly while at the same time protecting the data itself and maximising privacy. Mapping data like this gives a true picture of the entire organisational structure, at a glance, while remaining compliant to every regulatory necessity worldwide, and avoiding costly issues arising. Businesses looking for ways to optimise in the current climate should look to their lineage. By properly understanding how their data and information flows within their organisation, financial institutions can not only understand what can be streamlined and where workflows can be improved, they can take a less risky approach to maintaining strength and scaling during this challenging period. They may just find their business operations are in a fitter position to adapt to a post-COVID world.
