No matter if you’re in sales, marketing sales, IT or another business function, you’ll need to have access to accurate, reliable data to make your decisions. This is where good data management comes into play -and it’s the reason it’s one of the top trends in technology to watch in 2018.
Data management is a broad term that covers all areas that deal with treating your data as a valuable asset, and making sure that it is accurate, reliable and accessibility. That includes everything from data architecture to the deployment of data and analytics systems to managing the storage lifecycle of your business’s data.
A strong strategy for managing data includes six primary, or core attributes:
Accuracy: the data must reflect actual, live objects and events. It should also be verified by trusted sources.
Completeness — the data must include all values that are required for a use case such as sending a message to a client with only their last name.
Consistency Data should remain consistent across all data sets and stay the same despite being updated or reorganized.
Accessibility – the information can be easily retrieved by those who require them, without compromising compliance standards.
A data management strategy will only be effective if it is supported by all departments and business divisions. This is especially crucial since faulty data could cause a significant financial loss to your company. IBM estimated that poor handling of data costs the U.S. economy $3.1 trillion per year in lost productivity, and costs associated with maintaining data.