Modern businesses are operating in a rapidly evolving digital world, and risk failure if they are unable to keep pace with their peers. The increasingly online nature of our personal and business lives is forcing organizations toward strategic digital transformation at break-neck speed.
Whether it’s automating legacy systems, enhancing customer experience or reforming business processes with new technologies, these efforts rely on one crucial element – data.
This article explains why data is transforming the digital landscape of organizations today, and how data discovery forms a crucial component of successful transformation – driving innovation, reducing risk and building for the future.
Defining digital transformation in a data-centric world
Digital transformation is a strategic initiative to integrate digital and computer-based technologies across all areas of its operation, replacing all analog and non-digital systems and processes.
In a 2025 survey, 82% of c-suite executives ranked digital transformation as a high priority, with over half claiming to have a digital strategy in place.
Digital transformation is a strategic process of business evolution, comprising many distinct initiatives, including:
- Digitization of analog assets
- Cloud migration
- Process reengineering
- Data analytics
- AI-driven automation
- New customer-facing services
- Data-centric cybersecurity
Digital transformation is not simply moving to the cloud or digitization. It is a strategic program of change impacting all aspects of an organization’s culture, technology and processes.
The data challenge in digital transformation
For many organizations the data that drives this transformation process is fragmented, hidden or poorly understood. Enterprises are overwhelmed with data, but are unable to utilize it effectively. Less than half of an organization’s structured data is used in decision making and less than 1% of unstructured data is analyzed or used at all.
Data is distributed far and wide, across structured databases, unstructured files, cloud platforms, collaboration tools and email, on endpoints and in forgotten legacy systems. Organizations lack the visibility they need to clearly understand their data landscape and, as a result, are unable to effectively coordinate their digital transformation initiatives.
Strategic benefits to data discovery for digital transformation
Data discovery is a critical element in a successful digital transformation strategy, acting as an enabler across several transformation domains, including:
- Cloud migration – by identifying what data should move, what should stay and what can be retired, discovery reduces the cost, risk and complexity of cloud migration initiatives.
- AI and machine learning – utilizing data discovery to validate AI training data is essential to ensure compliance with current privacy laws and AI guidelines.
- Emerging technologies – whether preparing for the quantum future or next-gen analytics, the ability to maintain visibility of data across the organization is essential.
Data discovery also delivers strategic benefits beyond facilitating specific transformation initiatives.
Risk reduction
The ability to identify and protect sensitive information – including PII, ePHI, authentication data and secrets – wherever it resides, and during any stage of the transformation process, enables organizations to respond to exposed data and manage unknown repositories in a timely manner. This delivers significant risk reduction, preventing data breaches and the associated reputational harm.
Compliance
Advanced data discovery and data management solutions offer demonstrable evidence for compliance with privacy laws such as CCPA, GDPR and APA, regulations including HIPAA and DORA, and security standards such as PCI DSS and ISO27001.
Maintaining accurate and up-to-date asset inventories – a basic requirement for most privacy and security compliance programs – is simplified with data discovery. While many organizations have system and device inventories, few are able to maintain accurate data inventories. Legacy discovery processes overlook unstructured data stores, and fail to identify and capture newly created data repositories.
Data management
Data management is becoming a core capability for digital organizations. According to the IDC, 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the last two years. The analyst company estimates that data stores are growing at a compound rate of 19.2% on average, while new data creation is growing 26% year-on-year.
Effective data management requires visibility across an organization’s entire digital estate. This visibility enables comprehensive classification and labeling of data assets; management of redundant, obsolete and trivial (ROT) data; effective data security posture management (DSPM); and data analysis for informed decision making.
Customer trust and experience
Consumers increasingly expect brands and organizations to be responsible for the security and protection of their data. This heightened awareness presents an opportunity for organizations that can demonstrate respect for consumer information.
By clearly understanding the personal data they possess, organizations can enhance their data practices, deliver a superior customer experience and refine data processing to align with consumer expectations.
Integrating data discovery with Ground Labs
Ground Labs’ Enterprise Recon supports strategic digital transformation by enabling comprehensive, automated data discovery and classification across an organization’s entire environment. It helps establish a clear baseline of sensitive and high-risk data – such as PII, financial records, and intellectual property – by scanning all structured and unstructured sources.
With built-in risk scoring and regulatory filters, it allows organizations to prioritize the most critical data for early remediation and protection efforts.
The platform, designed for data governance and compliance, comes pre-configured with over 300 personal data types and formats. It offers audit-friendly reporting that aligns with frameworks including PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR and CCPA.
Its scheduled scanning capabilities ensure that data discovery is not a one-time event but an ongoing process, supporting dynamic, long-term transformation initiatives.
The essential element of digital transformation
As businesses strive to modernize operations and enhance the customer experience, the ability to locate and manage data has become essential. Data discovery is not just a technical necessity but a strategic imperative for transformation initiatives.
By implementing advanced data discovery and data management tools like Enterprise Recon, organizations gain the visibility and control they need to drive their digital transformation strategy, while also reducing risk, ensuring compliance and maintaining customer trust.
To find out how Ground Labs can support your transformation program, arrange a complimentary data workshop or book a call with one of our experts today.