The evolution of digital technology has resulted in the generation of a humongous pile of data. Every company striving to survive in this digital world will need a strong strategy to manage data and extract the best outcome out of it.

Hence, modernization of data management becomes mandatory in order to incorporate the best practices to utilize valuable data and to make informed decisions. These decisions will eventually increase a company’s performance by making the business platform more scalable, reliable, flexible, and secure.

By making such decisions and necessary enhancement in data management, companies can save on resources, make fewer mistakes, reduce wastage, and many other remarkable feats that entirely benefit all the entities linked with the businesses.

Long story short, the leading companies in different industries that are dependent on data can follow these proven practices and incorporate them in their data management plans to make the business processes more efficient.

Best data management practices

1. Governance of data

One of the prime measures that a company has to take is proper governance of data. The generation and distribution of data should be managed and properly governed. Data flow within the different departments and management segments should be controlled.

In this aspect, the chief information officer will not be the only one to monitor data and ensure proper governance. The education of almost all the responsible team members and departments regarding data management should be done in order to understand the value of data generated and its utilization at an optimum level.

In this aspect, entities that are not under the control of the companies such as users, partners, stakeholders, etc may not be educated with such practices but can be monitored or can be guided to follow a particular system. It enables in making the process smoother and better.

2. Automation is the Answer

Another remarkable practice that makes data management more convenient and fruitful is automation. Many companies still rely on manual data input and management methods. It means that these methods are restricted by the SOPs and the thought process of the entry personnel.

By utilizing the best artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms, data can be input in the respective slabs based on its analysis. The automated platforms will enable an enterprise to enter data whenever and wherever it is needed. Hence, the interdependencies of the data can be mapped, and a strong blueprint is produced. This blueprint enables a company to build a data management strategy that can eventually make it more efficient and productive.

Moreover, manual data entry takes a toll on the workforce. By automating the system, a company can get rid of the overhead costs and can free the workforce to do something more important while the automated platform does its work. it will create its own data pipeline as per the industrial protocols and will also aid in governing data perfectly.

3. Scaling up an Existing System

If we follow the trend, we can easily understand that data volume will increase rapidly as a lion’s share of the companies is using SaaS products and online platforms. Hence, this abrupt increase in data generation can cause huge chaos and the preexisting system might not be able to handle or give an efficient output.

Scaling up the existing system by introducing specialized or tailor-made systems along with well-trained staff will enable a company to map data, analyze it and make better decisions. These data-driven decisions will eventually impact the revenue generation of a company positively.

Scaling up does not mean that a company will have to build another floor for installing new machines for data management. These days, cloud-based platforms and other resources can be used without even transforming the architecture of an office. This new practice will need a higher volume of storage and processing power of the cloud-based products used to handle escalated network traffic.

4. The Business Impact You Desire

The identification of your data sources and usage has become mandatory these days. You will also have to figure out the desired impact of this data on your business so that the best practices can be incorporated into an existing system.

In this aspect, the evaluation and understanding of the end-users become the highest priority. They do not possess programming knowledge but will be responsible for generating data at this end. This is where a company needs a proper balance between end-user-driven decentralized data analysis and centralized standard data management capabilities.

Introducing this measure will balance and optimize the data management platforms used by the companies these days. It will also empower the business by managing data to understand the business factors.

5. Eradicate Data Silos to Make Data Available

Another brilliant practice that every company relying on data management should follow is eliminating the existing data silos present internally in the system. These silos do not allow users within the company to use data and restrict their access.

The modernization of your data architecture will lead to an efficient platform where it will provide data to the personnel at the right time. In absence of such an efficient platform, users often duplicate the existing data causing a huge mess. It becomes really tough to find out the actual data from that pile.

Incorporate practices that show good governance and distribution of data for proper evaluation and cleansing. This, in turn, will break down the data barriers and will efficiently distribute them to the required sections.

In a nutshell

These are the five prime practices adopted by the top companies who understand the value of data in this competitive market. The implementation of these 5 practices will lead to the discovery of efficient data management tools and the formation of strategies considering the desired outcome.

These transformations will not make your company data-dependent but will make it data-driven. You will find your business operations scalable and can make remarkable decisions based on the generated information from these newly implemented data management practices. Seek professional data management services if necessary for discovering these trending practices and find a customized solution.

Author Bio: Jafar Sadhik

He has 5 years of experience working with educators and executives to address a wide range of text. He is a subject matter expert in data management, SaaS, automation, intelligence, etc. He authors guides and tip sheets for maintaining organizational memory, data modelling, and SQL mining and data visualization areas.He read Agatha Christie’s novel’s when free.