The Importance of Data Management
August 3, 2024 by Karen
Data management is the process of establishing and enforcing rules, processes and procedures for handling data throughout its lifecycle. It ensures that data is reliable and accessible, which facilitates compliance with regulations and allows for informed decisions.
The importance of effective data management has grown significantly as organizations automate their business processes, leverage software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and deploy data warehouses, among other initiatives. This results in a plethora of data that must be consolidated and pushed to business intelligence (BI) and analytics systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, machine learning and generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools for advanced insights.
Without a well-defined data management plan, businesses can end up with incompatible data silos and unbalanced data sets which make it difficult to run analytics and business intelligence applications. Unorganized data management can reduce the trust of customers and employees.
To address these challenges it is crucial that companies create a data management strategy (DMP) that includes the necessary people and processes to manage all types of data. For example an DMP can help researchers determine the naming conventions for files they should employ to structure data sets for long-term storage and access. It can also include data workflows that define the steps to be taken to cleanse, validate, and integrating raw data sets as well as refined data sets in order to allow them to be suitable for analysis.
For companies that gather consumer information A DMP can help ensure compliance with privacy laws around the world such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or state-level regulations like California’s Consumer Privacy Act. It can also be used to guide the development and implementation of procedures and policies that address data security threats.
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