Ensuring efficient data flows and process transparency is the key to keeping enterprise costs under control while making sure the business can demonstrate compliance to applicable data laws.
However, numerous processes impact data, most of which affect a company’s ability to unify it. As a result, several businesses deal with data management problems on a regular basis and have seen all imaginable scenarios of deteriorating data quality.
Econsultancy cited a study by Experian Data Quality that revealed inaccurate data has a significant impact on the bottom line of 88 percent of businesses, and the average business loses 12 percent of its revenue because of it.
But the hidden cost of poor data management may be greater than the 12 percent lost revenue. 21 percent businesses revealed they suffered reputation damage, and 28 percent who experienced problems with email delivery revealed their customer service took a hit.
So how can you avoid these issues? More importantly, what can you do to unify data processes and streamline business operations? Here are some options to pursue:
ERP software
There is an extensive list of ERP benefits and data unification is one of them. At the heart of the concept of enterprise resource planning is data. Sharing data across silos such as business development, marketing, sales, and customer service promotes collaboration throughout the firm. The other picture of widespread data access is seeing who can edit and view the information. ERP software has intrinsic controls to ensure data security.
More benefits of unified data comes from having a central input system. That’s because merging data from multiple information systems often results in conflicts between sources. On the contrary, having one repository of information promotes the consistency, accuracy, and security of your business data. Another simple benefit of an ERP implementation is reduced costs.
Data analyst intern
A data analyst intern will cost less than hiring a full time data analyst. These individuals can work with the IT team/department to understand the variance and distribution of data – because data may not be normally distributed. With data unified around management best practices, your team can integrate clean data into your integration workflow. Also, pushing processes from top to bottom in the database will improve performance.
It’s also a good opportunity to remove invalid data based on the analytic method recommended by the data analyst intern, and enrich data quality by grouping together data that was previously scattered in silos. Moreover, it’s possible to prepare data for transforming or merging source data from different tables into a wide table – known as the ABT (analytical base table). Expect to experience faster workflows and more accurate data-based decisions.
CRM software
CRM software would integrate easily into your ERP software, organizing processes required to unify data. When implementing CRM, it’s critical to understand how master data management will be used to create a 360-degree view of the data (needed to unify data). Therefore, data not only comes from IT, but from platforms and technology that house it.
Data can also be controlled via data governance. For instance, someone can be given the role of a data governor, and asked to verify data before it enters the IT database. Also, libraries can be used for key data fields. This would allow for stricter control of data quality and result in cleaner data creation that is unified in the database.
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