Whether you’re in marketing, sales, IT or another job, you need to have access to reliable, accurate data to inform your decisions. This is where effective data management comes into play -and it’s the reason it’s a major technology trend to be watching in 2018.
Data management is the area that covers all disciplines related to treating data as an asset and guaranteeing its accuracy and reliability. That includes everything from data design to deploying analytics and data systems to managing the storage lifecycle of your enterprise’s information.
A solid data management plan includes six principal attributes or core attributes:
Accuracy – the data should reflect actual, real-world objects and events. It should also be verifiable using trusted sources.
Completeness — the information must contain all the mandatory information for a use case such as sending a mailer to a customer using only their last name.
Consistency – data should be consistent across all sets of data and remain that way when it is updated or reorganized.
Accessibility – the information should be easily accessible to those who require it, without any compromise to the standards of compliance.
A data management strategy will only be effective if it’s supported by all departments and business units. This is especially important since faulty data could result in a negative impact on your business. For instance, an IBM study estimated that poor data management can cost the U.S economy $3.1 trillion per year in lost productivity as well as the costs related to maintaining data.