How Brooklyn Data Assesses Your Company's Data Maturity

Understanding your company’s data maturity is critical to unlocking your data’s full potential. It’s also crucial in supporting your organization as you utilize data to optimize your decision-making

But what is data maturity?

At Brooklyn Data, we believe that assessing your data maturity is more than just a checklist exercise; it’s about understanding how your organization turns data into a strategic asset to drive business outcomes. The higher your organization’s level of data maturity, the more capable you are of making data-driven decisions, optimizing operations, enhancing customer experiences, and staying competitive in an increasingly dynamic market.

Our Data Maturity Framework

We use a pyramid to organize our data maturity framework. This pyramid sits on five data pillars central to determining your organization’s data maturity. They are:

• Infrastructure

• Team

• Insights

• Governance

• Strategy

Through stakeholder interviews, infrastructure assessments, documentation reviews, process reviews, analysis of reports and systems, and more, we score each of the pillars based on a four-category rubric: early, scaling, proficient, and leader. Then we roll the scores for each pillar into an aggregated maturity score for your entire organization.

Across each pillar, we perform a gap analysis, identifying your current state, an ideal future state that unlocks further business value, and an actionable set of recommendations to help move your organization higher up the maturity pyramid. 

Different Levels of the Pyramid

A “one size fits all” assessment or archetype at each level doesn’t exist. However, our experience has shown us that similarly scoring companies within a given level exhibit similar behaviors or patterns.

Companies at the lower levels can access data, but it’s a manual, time-consuming process for them, and there is a lack of trust in their data. The purpose of any given data request or pull is also unclear. If it exists, the data team is isolated from the business context and acts as a ticket desk. Some stakeholders have a go-to analyst, but this type of relationship doesn’t scale. At best, data products created in this environment are quickly abandoned, and the company typically lacks a coherent data roadmap. At worst, data is misinterpreted or leads to misinformed decisions.

As companies ascend the pyramid, their data teams become more efficient in delivering value to stakeholders — this could look like increased automation, better business understanding (leading to less friction), repeatable processes and frameworks, and deeper insights. Data controls, quality alerting, and definitions result in trustworthy data. The data team measures its key performance indicators (KPIs) and works with other teams to measure, track, and inform their business partners’ KPIs.

Higher up the pyramid, companies have data leaders who can articulate their vision and have the buy-in of the executive leadership. These data leaders might even be a part of the executive leadership team. We notice that business leaders have favorite dashboards they trust, and they reference them often (likely with bookmarks). Teams across the organization will justify their decisions and investments using data, which can be tied back to, or lives in, a dashboard or data product developed by the data team.

We also observe that non-data teams have embedded analysts or engineers who deeply understand the domain and consider second and third-order questions. Some organizations employ a Scrum team structure, with product managers, data scientists, and analysts iterating together in a pod. These companies use predictive models or machine learning to power their product, or on the operational side to reduce costs or for customer support. Ultimately, folks across the company have leveled up their data literacy, and there is a culture of rigorous and thoughtful decision-making.

Our recommendations and assessment are based on an objective measure of maturity and your organization’s specific business context. Your needs and priorities will differ along each pillar. For example, a gaming company may prioritize improving the level of its data insights to support user engagement. A healthcare company may prioritize its data governance posture, including regulatory compliance and data privacy. Understanding the nuances of your organization's needs is key for us to develop a tailored approach to data maturity that aligns with your business objectives

The Five Pillars of Data Maturity

The data maturity pillars are an exhaustive and complete look at the most important elements of your organization’s data capabilities.

1. Data Infrastructure

Your data infrastructure forms the foundation of your data capabilities. This includes the technologies and systems that store, process, manage, and deliver your data. A mature data infrastructure is scalable, resilient, and capable of handling the changing demands of your business. It makes your data accessible, reliable, and secure, providing a strong base for all other data activities.

2. Data Insights

Data insights refer to your ability to define KPIs, measure and track them, and extract meaningful insights to improve them. This pillar assesses how effectively your organization leverages data analytics, how teams engage with their data, and how data informs decisions. A mature approach to data insights means you can quickly identify trends, uncover hidden patterns, and predict future outcomes, empowering your team to act with confidence and a deep understanding of what is happening in your world to tell a compelling story with your data.

3. Data Team

The data team is the backbone of your data journey. This pillar evaluates the skills, roles, expertise, and collaboration within your data team and your organization. A mature data team is technically proficient, and deeply integrated within the business, ensuring that data initiatives align with broader organizational goals. They act as enablers, driving data literacy across the company and fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making.

4. Data Governance

Data governance encompasses the policies, procedures, and standards that ensure data quality, compliance, accessibility, and usability across your organization. In a mature organization, data governance is ingrained in the culture, with clear guidelines for data stewardship, ownership, and usage. Effective data governance minimizes risks associated with data breaches and ensures that your data remains accurate, consistent, and secure, enabling trust in the data you rely on.

Data stewards and business owners collaborate to ensure that governance is aligned with regulatory needs and business strategy, continuously improving data processes, and ensuring compliance across the organization.

We plan to share a more in-depth outline of our data governance solution in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

5. Data Strategy

Data strategy is the pillar that ties everything together. It involves establishing a clear vision for your organization, including a roadmap for executing your data initiatives. A mature data strategy is driven by strong data leadership that understands your organization’s business objectives and aligns data efforts accordingly. It includes clearly articulating how data initiatives align with and drive business needs.

Building Data Maturity for Long-Term Success

Assessing and improving your company’s data maturity is essential for staying competitive in today’s data-driven landscape. At Brooklyn Data, our comprehensive approach evaluates your data infrastructure, insights, team, governance, and strategy, to provide a holistic view of your data capabilities. By focusing on these five pillars, we help your organization harness the power of data to drive innovation, improve efficiency, reduce costs, enhance the developer experience, grow your brand, or company, and achieve long-term success.

Improving your company’s data maturity is an investment in its future. Brooklyn Data has the expertise and experience to guide you on this journey, turning data into a critical asset for your business.

Want us to assess your organization’s data maturity? Reach out. We would be happy to share more about our process with you.