We recently wrote about what data management is and why it’s important. In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap:
Data management is an essential part of modern business operations, enabling organizations to collect, store, and analyze vast amounts of data from various sources. The surge in business data volume and the usage of diverse systems to gather information has made it challenging for executives to manage and analyze figures effectively.
The purpose of data management is to establish a reliable records resource that leadership can use to make informed business decisions. In this Part II exploration of data management, we’ll delve deeper into the different aspects of data management, including the types of data management, the importance of having the right tools to house and analyze information, and best practices.
Varieties of Data Management
Data management encompasses a diverse set of roles and actions that involve individuals with varying expertise levels, ranging from CCOs to information technology architects and data scientists. Several significant areas of focus include:
Data Governance
Data governance is a comprehensive framework of activities and methods used to oversee an organization’s data throughout its entire lifecycle. The purpose of data governance is to ensure data is reliable, secure, accessible, and beneficial to the organization. This involves establishing values, rules, and benchmarks for data management.
Effective data governance requires ongoing effort and collaboration across various departments, including both business and technology teams.
Master Data Management
Master data management comprises collaborating between business experts and IT to ensure the uniformity, semantic dependability, and responsibility of essential data needed to run the business, including charts of accounts, suppliers, locations, employees, and sales prospects.
This process gives organizations the power to create consistent sets of data characteristics and identifiers, helping to ensure accuracy in reporting. Master data management ensures this core data is accurately reported, which is critical to the effective operation of an organization.
Data Stewardship
Data stewardship is a component of data governance that emphasizes enforcing policies that adhere to the organization’s data governance philosophies regarding information excellence, security, and truthfulness.
The data steward is usually a prominent member of the data governance team and is in charge of making the ultimate decisions in accordance with the company’s data governance policies.
Data Quality
Data quality refers to the activities and processes involved in identifying and resolving issues related to inaccurate, outdated, or duplicated data.
The objective of data quality exercises is to make sure the data is reliable, relevant, and properly used to generate precise insights and answers to critical operational questions.
Data Security
Data security is becoming increasingly critical due to the continuous emergence of malicious internet threats. Effective data management methods allow you to enhance security by providing a greater understanding of your data, such as its location, accessibility, and potential threats.
This information enables you to zero in on securing critical data by implementing appropriate measures like access controls, encoding, and other security protocols.
Why is Data Management Imperative?
Data analysis plays a crucial role in the functioning of any organization. It helps companies make informed decisions and find innovative ways to improve their operations, marketing strategies, client relationships, and security measures.
This highlights the significance of data management in today’s businesses. In the absence of effective data management strategies that establish a dependable data source for analyses, organizations are unable to make informed decisions. As such, the implementation of robust data management practices is vital for modern businesses to thrive.
A well-executed data management strategy is necessary in establishing a unified information source that can be trusted by all members of an organizations when they’re making decisions.
One of the most common obstacles faced by larger organizations is the issue of data silos, where the valuable insights needed by managers to properly build successful pathways toward the future are scattered across the organization, making it a terribly time-consuming process to consolidate them for analysis. The existence of data silos also implies the lack of a shared and consistent source of truth, making it difficult for decision-makers to agree on key issues since their opinions are often based on their individual interpretation of the information, rather than the actual problem or solution.
The problem of data silos is not just technical, but also organizational. A team that spans different functions and manages data centrally can create agreements and develop a deep understanding of the business’s data obstacles. By leveraging today’s top-quality data management applications, the team can standardize the data to ensure its accuracy and make it available for use by various groups and employees.
Data management is also essential for organizations to extract valuable insights from massive quantities of raw information. With the increasing amount of systems and devices, organizations are inundated with a deluge of data. Having a data management plan and software can assist you in identifying the most valuable data and filter it early on, reducing the information to a more controllable size for the people who need to process and analyze it. For instance, consider a temperature sensor on a manufacturer’s floor that announces the temperature every five seconds—if the temperature values fall within the standard, acceptable range, those records can be discarded and replaced somewhere around every 15 minutes. However, if suspicious values are detected, all records within a smaller timeframe can be collected.
Data Management Best Practices
Creating effective data management practices is essential for ensuring positive forward moves in your business. It’s important to recognize that this is an operations-led project with information technology support, rather than an IT-driven initiative. Data management endeavors that are led by IT teams have limited value, as technology professionals typically lack the in-depth knowledge of business users regard their organizations’ data.
1. Define Your Goals
To start your data management voyage, it’s important to create goals that outline what you’re trying to accomplish. Defining your goals helps identify the processes required for gathering, depositing, categorizing, sustaining, scrubbing, securing, and scrutinizing your data. You also need to focus on assessing risk.
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into this process. Clearly defined goals also ensure you focus only on handling the data that’s necessary.
2. Devise a Plan
After defining your goals, the next stage is to create a plan to achieve them. This involves gathering input from various departments within the organization to ensure a comprehensive understanding of leaders’ data needs.
The plan should include:
- Estimating data usage
- Defining accessibility parameters
- Determining archiving strategies
- Assigning data ownership and stewardship
- Other elements
This data management plan should serve as both a reference guide and flexible document that adapts as the organization’s data needs evolve over time.
3. Uphold Data Quality
Numerical information is dynamic—constantly subject to changes. For instance, client and vendor locations are a prime example. Any time one of these groups moves, it becomes imperative to have a system that allows them to update their addresses with ease. Ideally, you’d want a tool that automatically lets you know of the change and updates your various systems. As you can likely picture, data undergoes numerous changes in a functioning system, necessitating considerable effort to maintain data accuracy.
4. Secure Your Data
In today’s landscape, organizations must prioritize data security. Cyber criminals who breach a company’s defenses typically aim to pilfer, degrade, delete, or encrypt data as a way to coerce the organization into paying ransom money. Effective data management can help safeguard critical information by providing a deeper understanding of the data at hand, allowing you to apply more rigorous controls and safeguards to the most sensitive data.
Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that security threats are constantly evolving, and relying on static security policies can leave you vulnerable. It’s crucial to stay vigilant and keep abreast of the newest threats so you can adapt your security tactics accordingly.
5. Establish a Data Management Department or Function
In organizations of all sizes, the complexity of data requires a collaborative approach, as no individual can possess a comprehensive understanding of all the business’s data necessary for effective management. Therefore, it’s crucial to assemble a data management panel comprising of individuals with a deep understanding of both the data and the organizational dynamics, enabling them to identify data ownership across departments. To ensure a successful data management initiative, it’s vital to have team members who possess business acumen and familiarity with the data generated and utilized by various business groups. By establishing a cross-functional data management group, you can leverage the expertise of diverse professionals, gather best practices, and foster synergies throughout your organization.
Add NetSuite to Your Organization’s Data Management Toolbox Using MIBAR
NetSuite, a cloud-based application suite built on a single database, offers companies numerous benefits for effective data management. With NetSuite, businesses can ensure their data is securely replicated, backed up, and accessible from any location, providing real-time visibility into financials, customer data, and inventory. The system incorporates disaster recovery capabilities and business continuity assurance through data center replication and synchronization. NetSuite’s scalability is proven, supporting steady increases in transaction volumes and data management.
Implementing NetSuite with the assistance of MIBAR, a trusted partner, can enhance your data management efforts significantly. Companies can centralize product data management, enabling stakeholders to access and utilized master design and development data efficiently. NetSuite’s track record of serving a vast customer base, processing billions of daily requests and managing substantial data volumes, underscores its ability to accommodate business growth.
Schedule a NetSuite demo with the MIBAR team today!
