In its simplest terms, data management is the process that includes acquisition, storage, validation, protection, and processing of data. This ensures accessibility and reliability of data, which business can use in making business decisions, understanding consumer behaviour, and developing marketing strategies based on the trends and opportunities in the market.
Promising, don’t you think?
Unfortunately, data management comes with several challenges that could prevent you from fully utilizing the data you gathered. Below are some of the setbacks you might experience and find out what you can do to address it.
Unmanaged and misunderstood data
Apparently, collecting data is just one step in the process of data management. In fact, all of the data you gathered are useless if you don’t make sense out of it.
This is among the most common challenges in data management. Companies must be able to make sense out of the data collected to be able to use it in their favour. Once you understood the raw data in front of you, that’s when you can effectively come up with efficient processing, storage, and validation system as well as effective strategies for data analysis.
How to store collected data
You gathered data from reviews on your social media channels, responses left in the comments section of your website’s blog, surveys conducted, and customer interviews among others. What’s the next step?
This is where data management challenge comes in. You got all the information, but you have no idea how to handle and store these data. Inefficient data storage would mean continuously collecting data, which results in larger data storage requirement.
How can you address this? Having a large storage data bank is a must and the first step to do while you are deciphering and organizing the data you collected. Investing in data libraries, cloud-based solutions, or network- attached storage solution are others ways to address data storage issues.
Undefined business goals
What do you hope to achieve in five years? What about in 10, 15, or 20 years? How about your business’ short-term goals?
As a business owner, it is imperative that you define your business goals and what you want to attain on a specific timeline. This is important because defining your goals will enable you to categorize and organize data more efficiently. Once your data is organized according to your business goals, it will be easier for you to make data-driven business decisions such as the creation of disaster recovery plan that will help your company get better and go past your competitors.
Data management is not a responsibility of only one department
You might think that managing data is left on one department alone, say IT or Marketing department. Apparently, that is not the case. This could also be the reason why companies find it challenging to come up with sound business decisions because of the belief that one department is “independent.” When it comes to data management, every department in your company is responsible for managing it.
What can you do to address this challenge? Enhance cooperation among the different departments in your company. Establish a system where departments can input data to make it easier for others to access it. Your company could benefit a lot when each department cooperates with one another.
Ignorance is a challenge
You employed the services of one of the top data management solutions provider in your area. You crafted a policy that outlines proper data management techniques. The system is promising and will definitely help a lot in ensuring efficiency in your company in terms of collecting, storing, organizing, and managing data.
The problem is not everyone understands how the system works.
It may take time, but training your employees about the new system is advisable. Set a schedule for training so that the entire operations won’t be compromised. It’s just a little sacrifice that you could benefit from in the long run.
Two words: cyber attack
Not all company owners take cyber attack seriously, but it is happening. In fact, those who are in the energy, healthcare, and retail sectors are more prone to cyber attacks. According to a study conducted by Accenture, the annual cost of cyber-security is pegged at $11.7 million with an average number of 130 security breaches per year – and this continues to rise.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges in data management is ensuring that your data is safe and secure. Any threats to your data’s security could be detrimental to your company. You could potentially lose suppliers and clients due to lack of trust – a situation you don’t want to happen. This could adversely affect your reputation as a business owner because you cannot protect vital information.
What can you do? Backing up your data is the first thing you should do in case cyber-attack happens. Set up a schedule every week for backing up of files to ensure that all of the data you need will be saved. Don’t forget to use encryption tools for added protection. This way, you can ensure that your business will still function no matter what happens.