Flexible data management is the process of establishing and maintaining data structures that are able to respond to the needs of business. This enables organizations to better adapt and respond to changes in the business environment, improve access to information and assist in decision-making using the most accurate and current information available.

As businesses struggle to keep up with the rapid-changing business world, flexibility is becoming flexible data management more essential. The old saying that the only constant is change holds true in modern organizations and if an organization’s data infrastructure can’t keep up with the ever-changing needs and strategic goals it will soon be obsolete.

Flexibility is also crucial to ensure that businesses can efficiently utilize their current and future information assets to gain competitive advantage. This can be achieved by implementing new methods of monitoring the health and integrity of data pipelines and individual data pieces (known collectively as “data observability”) which can help identify and resolve problems prior to them affecting the data’s security or quality. This method provides a proactive, automated method of managing data that reduces the need for human intervention and speeds up problem-solving.

Flexible data management makes it easier for teams to share information and access it. For example, marketing may have a different method of tracking and resolving risks than IT, however both methods can be rolled into one easy-to-read document that is sent to the top executives of the organization. This is possible through tools such as business glossaries, data federation and metadata-driven information dictionary.