Making the most of your data can bring tremendous rewards for your business. So as you embark upon data governance improvements or new data management projects, it’s important that you consider the best practices and make an effort to implement these measures.
But what best practices should you integrate into your data management project plan? Consider these tips as you strive to put your data to work for your company.
Create Standardized Data Entry and Data Handling Protocol
There are many different ways to process and enter data, so it’s vital that you take a uniform approach to data handling. This will help you maintain integrity, uniformity and consistency in your data.
Once you’ve developed a data handling protocol, you’ll want to verify that everyone within the company is appropriately trained in these processes. This is a critical prerequisite for any data management project plan.
Make Sure You’re Compliant with GDPR, CCPA and Other Regulations
There is no shortage of data privacy regulations and most companies are affected by at least one or two regulatory laws. CCPA, GDPR and industry-specific data privacy laws — such as those affecting tax professionals — are just a few examples.
Take some time to understand what data privacy laws you’re required to follow and if necessary, speak with a data governance consultant like Sertics to determine what measures are necessary for your business. Data privacy and regulatory compliance should be a key aspect of your data management project plan.
Use Data Visualization Tools like PowerBI or Tableau
Rows of data and numerals can be hard to understand and analyze. This is where data visualization tools such as Tableau and PowerBI can be useful. These data visualization platforms allow you to create and view graphs, charts and other visuals that depict your data in an easy-to-understand manner.
A good data governance platform will feature full integration with data visualization tools. In fact, that’s one of the advantages to using data governance software like Sertics, as it integrates fully with Tableau and PowerBI visualization tools.
Prioritize Your Data Security and Create a Data Recovery Plan
You need to protect your data, whether it’s through encryption, geofencing, multi-factor authentication or a combination of these and other strategies. A data breach can have disastrous effects on your business, your clients/customers and your company’s reputation. In fact, a data security breach can be extremely costly.
For these reasons, it’s vital that you consider data privacy and data security as you plan your data management strategy or undertake a new data governance project. As you develop a data recovery plan, you’ll want to address issues such as:
- Who will oversee the data recovery or restoration process?
- What is your anticipated timeline for a worst-case scenario recovery of all data?
- Who would be affected and how would those individuals be affected by a data loss incident?
- What stopgap measures would you need to implement if a large-scale data recovery plan had to be implemented?
Consider data redundancies and backups in the event of corruption or other incident that results in data loss. Take some time to understand the risks affecting your data and create a data recovery plan and backup strategy to ensure your information is protected for the long term. You have many options for data backups, including the cloud, USB and external hard drive data storage, along with network attached storage (NAS).
Plan to Maintain Your Data Regularly
Some estimates peg the business database decay rate at approximately 40% per year, which is quite significant, particularly when you take a long term view with your data management plan.
A solid data management plan should include time for data cleansing and verification. You’ll want to schedule maintenance time so your team can verify that your data is accurate and reliable. There are few things worse than no data at all and one is erroneous data. The impact of bad data can be very costly, particularly if you’re using data to drive important business decisions.
Quite simply, you need to rely upon your data. To do so, you must be confident that your data is accurate and relevant. A regular data maintenance schedule will go a long way toward ensuring that your data stores are current and valid.
In addition to following these tips for data management projects, you can’t underestimate the importance of having a secure, scalable and user-friendly data lake. Sertics is a 7T product designed to help companies create a data lake that doesn’t require a team of data scientists and analysts to work. Contact the Sertics team to learn more!
7T has offices in Dallas, Houston, Chicago, and Austin, but our clientele spans the globe. If you’re in search of innovative data management experts or talented developers to develop your next mobile app or enterprise software solution, contact 7T today.
