How AI-Powered Data Mapping is Democratizing Data Management

More than 300 exabytes of data are created every day. To put that number into perspective, one exabyte equals one billion gigabytes.

Considering the amount of data being created, there is a need for more efficient and easier data management and analytics. The recent proliferation of AI in people's personal and professional lives explains why they would look at AI to address their data management challenges. In fact, 64% of business owners believe AI will help them increase productivity.

Data mapping, a crucial step in data management, is ideal for automation. It's a repetitive and time-consuming process, making it well-suited for AI. Automating data mapping can free up time for higher-priority tasks.

This post looks at data mapping and its different types, and the role of data mapping in data management. It will also discuss how the combination of AI and data mapping makes data management easy and accessible and presents opportunities for organizations and software vendors alike.

What is Data Mapping?

Data mapping connects and transforms data to be shared from one system or database to another.

Consider this: A business wants to launch a referral reward program. It has a database holding all its customer data and wants to connect it to a database holding purchase records. Mapping the relevant data from the source to the newly merged database lets it do just that.

With the databases properly mapped, the business will now have access to actionable information in real time, letting them know which customers to contact for the program.

In other words, data mapping helps different databases connect and communicate. This can improve business intelligence capabilities throughout the organization. It also allows core functions like Marketing, Product Development, and Finance to operate synergistically, using real-time data to drive their decision-making.

Types of Data Mapping

Data mapping has three main types: manual, semi-automated, and automated. The manual approach to data mapping has been the norm for decades. However, semi-automated and automated data mapping approaches are quickly gaining ground due to their benefits. Let’s look at some of these benefits:

Manual Data Mapping Manual mapping offers users greater flexibility and control over their data flow. However, it can be a long and repetitive process. If done using coding languages like SQL or C++, it requires a lot of working hours and technical expertise. Manual data mapping is no longer a practical option, considering the amount of data that organizations create every minute.

Semi-Automated Data Mapping The semi-automated approach offers a good balance between flexibility and efficiency. A good example of semi-automated data mapping is schema maps. Semi-automated data mappers use visual representations of the data maps, allowing users with limited technical knowledge to construct dataflows. This approach is less time-intensive and doesn’t require much coding expertise. However, it still needs some technical knowledge, regardless of whether an organization relies on coding or drag-and-drop solutions.

Automated Data Mapping

Automated data mapping offers many benefits compared to manual and semi-automated data mapping. For instance, it offers flexibility and speed and doesn’t require technical knowledge. The automated approach makes scheduling, scaling, and deploying your dataflows easy. However, the necessary technical training will be platform-specific and not necessarily transferable.

The Importance of Data Mapping

As businesses collect more data, data mapping becomes increasingly essential. This scenario is even more challenging because businesses gather data from multiple sources. That data becomes unusable if they fail to collect, organize, clean, and transform it into actionable insights properly and on time. In other words, proper data mapping is like implementing a filing system to ensure that all your data ends up in the right place, in the suitable format, at the right time. With this filing system, your organization will catch up in data management, analytics, and business intelligence functions.

AI and Data Mapping

The trend of AI adoption in data management relates to the evolving data needs of organizations. With efficiency and ease of use as priorities, AI’s role becomes even more important in data management, specifically data mapping.

For instance, semi-automated data mapping solutions were present well before the AI boom. So, the need to automate the data mapping process is not new. Even so, the AI wave has the potential to make fully automated data mapping the standard practice in data management. With AI getting tons of attention and resources, the time is right for organizations and software vendors to solve data management challenges using AI.

While AI is already being implemented across data management tools, full data mapping automation is still a work in progress. Nevertheless, the following are some ways AI is democratizing data management by transforming the data mapping process:

• Automated Discovery of Data Sources and Attributes: AI-powered data mappers automate the discovery of relevant data sources, attributes, and possible connections. This allows users to eliminate the lengthy steps of manual data mapping. Users can fine-tweak the AI-generated maps to their specific needs and accept or reject AI suggestions as they see fit. This significantly simplifies data mapping, letting users handle complex dataflows in relatively shorter times.

  
  

• Contextual Analysis to Identify Patterns and Connections: What sets AI apart from generic automation tools is its ability to think and analyze. An example is interaction with large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Gemini. These LLMs can understand the context and tailor their responses accordingly. Similarly, AI-powered data mapping solutions can analyze and interpret the data fields to intelligently identify and establish patterns and relationships. This significantly reduces the technical knowledge requirement, allowing even beginners to use data management solutions with little expertise.

  
  

• Simplified Schema Mapping: Data mapping algorithms also use pattern recognition to identify semantic relationships. This simplifies schema mapping as AI can find similarities between seemingly unrelated schemas. In short, AI-assisted field and schema mapping ensure smooth data integration, reducing complexity for end-users.

AI and Data Mapping: Why It’s a Good Combination

Data mapping is a crucial step, but it can get repetitive and taxing quickly. By incorporating AI, data management platforms can streamline, speed up, and simplify the entire process for their end-users.

Moreover, by cutting the requirement for technical knowledge, software vendors and organizations alike can promote data literacy among their internal and external stakeholders.

As a result, organizations can promote a more efficient and effective use of data across their functions. For instance, marketers without coding experience can gather actionable campaign insights. Similarly, the Research and Development team can leverage data from Customer Support to improve their offerings.

Similarly, software vendors can cater to a larger customer base by customizing their offerings for non-technical users. They can empower their customers to move beyond the traditional approach, democratizing data management across all relevant functions.

This win-win proposition should encourage AI adoption for data mapping among all stakeholders.

Conclusion

Combining data mapping and AI is a logical step to meet the evolving needs of data management for all stakeholders. For businesses, it democratizes data management, simplifies the data mapping process, and saves time and costs. For software vendors, this integration provides access to a larger audience, increasing profitability and reach. For end users, the AI and data mapping combination makes their day-to-day work easier, faster, and more effective.