Data is omnipresent in the modern world. Regardless of the industry, every company uses data in its daily operations to further its objectives or to evaluate its performance.
Still, your data analysis could be faulty if you don’t learn the best practices for data management. Or even worse, you could be jeopardizing the security of confidential customer data.
Take a look below and learn more about the essential tips to take your business data management game to the next level.
Make sure your business data is secure
If your business depends on gathering consumer data, you must take precautions to prevent a data breach from jeopardizing all of your clients’ personal information. When it comes to best practices for data management, you should give data security and protection top priority.
Making sure that you adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the first step. This law mostly applies to companies that are based in the EU and serve clients from there. Depending on your location, there may be additional rules that you must follow.
Then there’s the SOC 2 compliance. Controls that directly relate to the AICPA’s Trust Services Criteria are evaluated with a SOC 2 audit. A SOC 2 audit report concentrates on the internal controls of an organization as they relate to the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of a system.
Pick the right servers
Servers are responsible for data management, data storage, and data distribution across a network to workstations. Since they are more powerful than traditional workstations, they often provide enhanced levels of security as well as straightforward interaction with backup and recovery software.
Furthermore, because servers use redundant power sources and disk drives, they are a crucial component of a disaster recovery plan.
For instance, you could make use of Dell servers. A lot of users claim that PowerEdge servers do a great job for businesses of almost all sizes. And even if you don’t have the necessary funds to acquire brand-new servers, used Dell servers and even refurbished ones will most likely do the trick and effectively manage your data.
Implement a backup and recovery policy
The core of performance-tracking metrics that support decision-making and thus advance the organization lies in data storage and accessibility. Knowing where you’re coming from and how you’ve performed in the past is essential for effectively developing plans to help you move forward.
It goes without saying, you should have all of your data backed up. Additionally, make sure that you can always retrieve all of the data.
Cloud storage is becoming more and more popular today. It makes sense to invest in it because it’s less expensive to maintain than some conventional ways of archiving backup data. Additionally, it’s considerably simpler to use, and you can simply acquire service provider support if you run into any problems.
Once you have backup solutions set up, it would be wise to frequently create backups so that you’re appropriately prepared for a potential disaster.
Data cleansing schedule
Data management for small businesses is a continuous effort. No matter the size of your business, it’s critical to keep track of data and make sure it is high-quality, compliant, and economical.
A regular data cleansing program is one method that many SMEs use to stay on top of this. From month to month, a lot of factors might change. Customers may relocate, change their address, or cancel their consent without providing you any prior notice.
Additionally, there can be some contacts in your database who are no longer active. Although it may not be something that comes to the forefront of every company’s mind, removing inactive contacts from your database is crucial for protecting your brand and handling the matter delicately.
Make sure to pay special attention to these actions once you start the schedule:
- Eliminate data entry mistakes.
- Remove incomplete data.
- Validate data.
- Remove and update information regularly.
- Remove inactive contacts.
Make sure your data is accessible
The management of data should be done in a way that makes everything straightforward and easily available for everyone involved. However, data shouldn’t be available to all employees at your organization. Nevertheless, those employees who have a legitimate need to access it should have no trouble getting to it when they want to.
Because of this, you and your team will not need to invest as much time or effort. It is helpful to make sure that anyone who is responsible for managing the data is aware of what the data is used for and how it is processed.
Final words
When it comes to data, many companies are trying to run before they have even learned to walk. But who could blame them for wanting to hop on the bandwagon when there are so many experts raving about how big data is the holy grail of the modern business world?
You may be under a time crunch, but if you don’t have a solid set of data management standards in place, the results of your research will be inaccurate and your data will not be protected.
