5 Strategies for Businesses to Up Their Data Management Game

With the rise of technology in the business world, companies now have incredibly large amounts of digital data. It allows businesses to improve their operations significantly by utilizing and analyzing the data available. However, at the same time, it can be quite challenging for many businesses to manage the large amounts of data stored. Poor data management can lead to the loss of valuable customer or business data – essential for companies to keep functioning.

More importantly, in worse cases, businesses can suffer a dent in their reputation andlose financial resources due to data loss or destruction. In contrast, effective data management allows organizations to run efficient marketing campaigns, attract customers, and gain a deeper insight into business operations. Therefore, it’s crucial for businesses to up their data management game, especially in this technology-dependent era. To help you with this purpose, here are five strategies you can use for effective data management.

Get data management software

Almost every business operation can be automated in the modern world, and data management is no different. As the amount of data grows larger each day, it becomes extremely difficult for employees to manage all the data effectively. Therefore, it’s best to get data management software to handle the growing data with ease. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to only invest in the most reliable data management software. Without doing so, you can easily put your company’s data and critical information at risk. Many data management applications are malicious and can sabotage or destroy the company’s data.

However, you can never completely rely on an application to take care of your company’s data. Expert intervention is crucial to ensure that the software operates smoothly, yields desirable outcomes, and limits system errors. For this purpose, it’s indispensable to hire a data analytics expert who can handle the software and reduce potential issues effortlessly, and preferably someone possessing an online master’s. So, hire individuals withonline degree credentials and boost your data management game.

Improve data quality

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make regarding data storage is overlooking data quality. Similar to data stored physically, digital data quality can also degrade over time. For example, data can become obsolete or irrelevant as time passes. Without checking databases for outdated data and eliminating it, you may end up creating a negative effect on your business operations, such as sales and marketing.

Another aspect of data quality is duplication. As more data is added to databases, some can get duplicated. If you want to improve and maintain your business’s data quality, it’s best to reduce data redundancy within databases. For this purpose, you’ll need to frequently check, whether manually or automatically, for redundant data and delete it. However, you can also reduce duplicate data by training your employees to follow the right methods for uploading and manipulating the data stored. It’ll reduce the chances for similar files to be uploaded more than once.

Maintain data security

In recent years, cyberattacks have significantly increased due to the rise in digital data storage by companies. However, you can’t risk having a data breach, as it will lead to the loss of essential data assets andeventually a significant loss of money. By 2025, companies worldwide will lose as much as $10.5 trillion per year. Therefore, it’s crucial to make data security a part of your data management strategy.

Some of the most alarming cyber-attacks companies facethese days stem from social engineering methods. Cybercriminals manipulate inexperienced and untrained personnel through fake emails, pop-ups, and websites to easily access company data and credentials. However, training your employees to act wisely with company data can help you avoid such cyberattacks. Additionally, it’s also important to use foolproof firewalls and anti-malware applications to prevent malicious software from attacking your databases. Moreover, it’s imperative to know that simple passwords are no longer enough to keep your data safe from unauthorized access. Cybercriminals have several advanced techniques to get around passwords and steal data. Using multi-factor authentication instead of simple passwords is a viable way to keep data safe.

Improve access

Alongside data security, convenience matters as well. For effective data management, you need to ensure a balance between data security and convenience. Without focusing on convenience, it will be incredibly difficult and frustrating for authorized employees to access the data they need. Such a situation will reduce employee productivity and satisfaction.

So, make sure authorized employees can easily and quickly access the data they need while making it impossible for unauthorized access to take place. For this purpose, it’s best to provide each employee with separate database accounts based on the data they have permission to access. It’ll prevent any employee from accessing another employee’s data while enabling fast data access. You can also set different levels of data access permissions to further improve security without compromising convenience.

Implement a backup plan

Indeed, you can never be sure about protecting your data from loss or theft. Even with the most advanced cybersecurity measures and effective data management methods, your company data is still at risk. In simple words, accidents can happen. About 140,000 hard drive malfunctions occur in the US alone,at a weekly rate.Therefore, it’s better to play safe and prevent data loss with the help of a data recovery plan. Doing so will help you re-upload your data to the database even if it gets lost due to an accident or cyberattack.

To effectively backup your data, you need to pick a safe secondary data storage location away from the current database. For instance, many companies use private cloud servers to backup their data. Once you have a secure location, you can make a copy of your existing database and upload it to the secondary location to be used for data recovery. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to keep updating the backup database for a 100% recovery in the case of data loss. Furthermore, if you have the resources to do so, it’s best to have more than one backup database. It’ll allow you to recover your data even if one of the backup databases losesits data.

Conclusion

Data is used in numerous business operations, from creating marketing strategies to making important business decisions. Therefore, data management is essential for every company in today’s technology-driven business world. Unarguable, you don’t want to end up with a poor reputation, reduced sales, and loss of money only due to poor data management. So, ensure to follow the methods mentioned above and up your game in data management.