As data continues to be a crucial component of how companies improve their value to their customers, it becomes more critical to make sense of the data they have collected.
Data management is the process that involves collecting, organizing, storing, protecting, verifying, and processing essential data, as well as making it available to your organization to have access.
To avoid falling into the trap of having accumulated information that you can’t effectively interpret to improve your products and services, here are five benefits of proper data organization to improve efficiency and remain competitive in your industry.
1.) Your Organization’s Data Is Valuable
Data organization is vital because your organization’s data is a valuable resource.
It would be a complete waste of time and money to collect business intelligence and then lose it before it can benefit the organization.
This would put your company in the unfortunate position of having to double down on even more time and money to regain that same data all over again, if possible.
According to the National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, 93% of the companies that had the unfortunate circumstance of losing their data center for ten days or more because of a disaster ended up having to file for bankruptcy within one year of that disaster taking place.
In addition to those findings, it was also stated that 50% of businesses that ended up in a situation without data management for this same period filed for bankruptcy right away.
Ensure a data management system and plan that all your employees are trained to understand and follow to ensure that critical information is backed up and retrievable from a secondary source.
Having a solid data organization is also essential to help prevent security risks that can lead to having data hacked and stolen.
2.) Data is Difficult to Manage
Effective management of data within your organization is vital because organizations are subject to a rising number of compliance regulations, significant increases in information storage capacity, and the sheer amount of data and documents being generated.
Like it or not, this growth rate is showing no signs of slowing down. International Data Corporation (IDC) has predicted that the amount of information generated will increase by a multiple of ten by 2025.
These massive amounts of data from ERP systems, CRM systems, and general business documents are often labeled big data.
3.) Boost Up Your Productivity
With proper data organization, you can also increase the level of productivity that your organization is capable of.
On the other side of that coin, having disorganized and inadequate data management will lead your organization to be inefficient and slow down your progress. Come of the signs of boosted productivity with effective data management include:
- Your employees can find and understand information to do their job more efficiently.
- It is simpler for your staff to validate the results they may have.
- It offers the structure for data to be easily shared.
- Enables information to be stored for future reference.
4.) Make More Accurate Decisions
Several organizations use various sources of data for planning, trend analysis, and managing their performance.
Different employees may use different information sources to perform the same task if there happens to be no data management process and they are unsure of which correct information source to utilize.
Keep in mind that the value of information becomes only as good as the information source. Therefore, decision-makers across the organization often analyze different numbers to make choices that affect the company.
Not having a solid data organization is risky business and can lead to conclusion efforts, processing inefficiencies, and data entry errors.
5.) Be Cost-Efficient
Another benefit of proper data management is making your organization more cost-efficient.
This is because it will allow your organization to avoid unnecessary duplication by storing and making all data easily referable to ensure employees never have to conduct the same research, analysis, or tasks already executed by someone else.
Also, operational adaptability is key to being cost-effective. If your organization drags its feet to react to the market or its competitors, it could put you far behind with a steep learning curve to catch up to new technological advancements.
With proper data organization, your employees will be able to access information and be notified of market or competitor changes faster to make decisions and take action significantly quicker.
In closing, the costs involved in correcting inadequate data management can run into millions of dollars from a single occurrence, depending on the size of your operation.
Be sure to be proactive instead of reactive, which could potentially cost you your entire company in the long run.
