By Upuli de Abrew, co-founder and director at Insight Consulting

In January, a Time magazine article called 2024 a make-or-break year for democracy with more than half of the planet’s population heading to the polls. South Africans saw peaceful democracy at play when the ruling party lost its majority for the first time since 1994. Dozens of other countries had elections with varying degrees of peaceful acceptance of the results. The “year of democracy” climax is no doubt the US general election.

While politics around the world can be described as messy, the goal of democracy – the end as it were – is equal rights for all. It is the democratisation of choice, voice, opportunity and more. This, despite challenges, is a beautiful ideal that many dedicate their lives towards either achieving or protecting. This ideal has the power to reshape how we approach data in the business world. Why? Because data is fuelling our digital age.

However, many organisations today, while familiar with the term data democratisation, are still stuck in the opposite of a democracy: a data autocracy where control and access is limited to a select few. While many may talk about data democracy and enablement, in practice they only enable a part of it. To be liberal and agile with data requires the confidence to enable knowledge workers at all levels of an organisation. While tools and processes play an important role here, cultural change is one of the biggest drivers of true data democratisation.

A major barrier to the cultural change required is fear. This is not just a top-down fear of relinquishing control, it’s also a fear driven from the bottom up with concerns around job security. In other words, as in the world of politics, much of the resistance comes from a fear about the prospect of transformative change.

Yet the truth is that true data democratisation is not about taking power away from anyone. It is rather about empowering everyone in an organisation. It’s about fostering a culture where data is seen as a shared resource – a tool for collective problem-solving and innovation. It is for the benefit of the organisation as a whole.

As the world of politics has taught us, embracing democracy when emerging from an autocracy, or even a dictatorship, requires a change in culture. And this isn’t easy. There are many ways of achieving cultural shifts in organisations but, in 2024 and beyond, in a workforce dominated by millennials and an increasing number of Gen Zs, old-fashioned project management presentations and change management techniques are just not going to work. It is out of touch with the zeitgeist.

How, then, can a business achieve the cultural buy-in it needs to truly embark on a journey of data democratisation? One avenue we are exploring is through the power of gamification. The rise of gamification is all around us. By tapping into the innate human desire for community, competition and achievement, it is possible to create data-driven experiences that are not only informative and effective at driving a data culture but also genuinely enjoyable.

Leveraging AI: Augmented intelligence

At the heart of data democratisation is the concept of “augmented intelligence” – a new AI. This AI refers to how human creativity and critical problem solving is amplified through technology such as AI. Reimagining AI as augmented intelligence can transform how we approach problem-solving and decision-making within our organisations.

Rather than AI being a threat to human jobs, its ability to excel at tasks such as data analysis and pattern recognition makes it useful because it frees up humans to bring real value to an organisation.

Turning the lens inwards into our own business, a leader in our organisation was facing a challenge with the manual processing of invoices. The admin team, despite their best efforts, was taking an inordinately long time to capture data, which had an impact on payment cycles. The leader recognised that the delay was a business problem affecting efficiency and productivity. In the space of a few days, and thanks to the talent of the internal development team, he implemented an AI-powered tool that leveraged optical character recognition (OCR) to automatically extract key information from the invoices such as the VAT number, customer details and product codes. This simple, automated step eliminated the need for hours and hours of manual data entry. By automating this repetitive task, the business was able to free up valuable resources and improve the overall financial management of the organisation.

By committing to the democratisation of data, businesses can unlock value at every stage of the data value chain – from data acquisition to decision making – not just in the realm of advanced analytics. This is the very definition of augmented intelligence because humans, up and down the data value chain and in various levels of the organisation, are empowered to think critically.

The future belongs to organisations that see data not as a weapon of control, or a resource to hold closely within a few hands, but rather as a catalyst for democratisation and collective progress. Organisations need to focus on a cultural evolution rather than a technological revolution.