Data exchange ties together different systems, enabling them to communicate with each with one another. This can facilitate a variety of business applications and helps to increase the amount of collaboration between teams and customers.
Companies of all sizes and across all industries could benefit from best practices to ensure seamless exchange of data. This enables them to improve their data acquisition process, monetize their data assets improve decision-making, encourage innovation, and enable interoperability. However, there are a few hurdles to be aware of like data inconsistencies, lack of transparency and trust, interoperability and data integration issues, and the need for a standardized data Governance framework.
Many companies are creating new revenue streams via data exchange, bringing in additional income and improving their operations. AccuWeather, for example earns money by placing its repositories that contain historical and forecasted weather information on data exchange platforms. This allows them to reach a wide range of users using data, from industries like agriculture to event planners.
To manage and optimize data exchange, it is important to evaluate the current processes and devise an overall strategy for managing data across the entire business. This should include a comprehensive knowledge of the value data exchange can bring, as well as the needs and expectations of stakeholders and the capabilities of current data sources. It should also include a strategy for data integration that is flexible enough to adapt to technological changes and to take advantage of future demands and opportunities. In the ideal scenario, this would be built around an architecture that is decoupled from applications and databases, supporting enterprise-level data integration strategies that are based on web services and brokenred messaging techniques.