It’s that time of the year again! I’m still buzzing about this year’s Showfloor Showdown at Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in London, where I had the opportunity to showcase ThoughtSpot's AI-Powered Analytics. In the spirit of facilitating a side-by-side comparison, we were all invited to look at global flooding and weather station data, analyze the variables affecting these natural disasters, and present key findings to the crowd.

Data asset standardization is the purposeful and carefully planned consolidation of redundant, contradictory reports, processes, and databases into enterprise standards.

Using data to make decisions is actually really hard. Yet nearly every tech company, business, and team touts “data-driven” as the de-facto way that they operate. In practice, this intention to be data-led is often just aspirational—only about a quarter of organizations report that they are actually data-driven, according to Harvard Business Review. It’s easy to see why organizations strive to more effectively use their data.

Look for the following must-haves when you want to move data seamlessly between sources and destinations of all kinds.