Building Relationships through Data and Technology

The relationship between data and technology is a Valentine's Day relationship worthy of celebration. This is a relationship that has provided businesses with new commercial opportunities and the ability to reduce operating costs and risks while simultaneously introducing new risks related to data security and privacy. It has changed the economics and competitive dynamics in most industries.

Data and technology create a virtuous cycle. A chain reaction that is omnipresent. We believe the key to prospering from an effective data-technology relationship, like any relationships, is a solid foundation based on trust.

Solid Foundation

The data and technology infrastructures of today's companies are required to reduce risk and create efficiency and rely on a solid foundation of trust developed with vendors, organizational leaders and the clients they support.

With data being the new oil, companies are hoarding large amounts of data, but most of it goes unused. Splunk commissioned a global survey of 1,300+ business leaders to learn about their data collection habits and how much they use. The survey revealed that 55 percent of all the data collected by respondents is dark data (i.e., collected data that goes unused). This is a major challenge across most industries. When asked why they aren't using dark data, the top two responses were missing or incomplete data and inadequate tools to capture and analyze the data.

Accessing this data and connecting it to entities shared throughout the enterprise can strengthen the integrity of data and technology infrastructures. By accelerating investments in data technology, resulting in a framework of components that can be specifically and flexibly applied to several types of foundational data challenges common in most industries, organizations can build upon their foundation of trust.

In broad terms, Kingland has built its framework to support foundational data needs in the markets that we serve, most notably Banking and Capital Markets, Public Accounting, Insurance, and Retail. The solutions broadly fall into three categories:

• Enterprise Data Management to allow clients to confirm a single source of truth by connecting people, applications and processes with reliable data and analytics
• Text Analytics to allow clients to extract and analyze from unstructured data the most important data on entities, people, and products
• Compliance Management to allow clients to avoid conflicts of interest by organizing compliance management and independence processing.

Trust

The old adage of “garbage in, garbage out” has taken on a new meaning in today’s data-centric environment.  The accuracy and usability of data used within a firm’s infrastructure is a leading indicator of its operating efficiency and quality of its end products. According to an Entrepreneur.com article, research has shown that bad data is on average a 30 percent or more drag on their revenue. It states that research firm Gartner found that the average cost per firm of poor data quality on business amounts to anywhere between $9.7 million and $14.2 million annually.

Building and maintaining an infrastructure where internal data can be trusted doesn’t happen by accident but is the result of careful planning and expertise in data management tools and processes. In addition, anyone who follows the news even casually understands how important a secure, trusted data environment is to the overall welfare of a company.  The press is constantly reporting about data security breaches and other data mishaps, and what gets reported is likely only a small percentage of issues that occur.  Nobody is completely immune to attack in today’s world, and at Kingland we have invested in hardware, software, and best of breed capabilities and procedures to ensure the highest level of data protection. 

Our software development processes are Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 5 certified and our data is securely managed in compliance with the American Institute of CPAs Service Organization Control (SOC2) to ensure security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy of customer data.  And this is just the beginning as we are actively investing in and completing requirements for even more stringent data security certifications and standards. Data protection is paramount at Kingland and worthy of our accelerated attention and investment.

Our commitment and track record of building world class software and security alongside our data technology expertise has provided us unique opportunities, not only to serve our clients, but to also serve the broader financial services community. In a world that is speeding up, where competitors can emerge overnight, and where the risk from bad or unsecured data has never been greater, a strong data and technology foundation is immeasurable.  

Creating an environment of trust and building a solid foundation through the use of data is something we want to nurture and celebrate every day.