Practically data is controlling the modern business world. Regardless of the industry, your organization is undoubtedly utilizing the data you collect in day-to-day operations. So you can monitor your performance and improve everyday operations.
Every day, data is becoming more and more essential. According to experts, approximately 463 exabytes of data would be created every day by 2025.
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And while all of this data is crucial to your success, data management can be hard to handle at times. That is why we collected these tips for successful data management.
Database development
Your data database is essential to achieving your data-driven business goals, which is why it’s vital to develop it with care and precision. There are certain principles you need to follow during the development of your database so you can ensure there are no errors and the data always stays correct.
A good database ensures your data is accurate and keeps its integrity, reduces redundant data, and accommodates your data reporting and processing needs.
To ensure you achieve this, you need to take the following steps during database development:
- Determine what will be the purpose of your database.
- Collect all the information you need and organize it in a way that makes it easier to locate the data you need later.
- Divide this information into different subjects or major entities and place them into tables.
- Decide what information you should store in what table.
- Choose a primary key for each table that will help you uniquely identify each row.
- Determine any table relationships that may exist.
- Analyze your design to see if there are any errors and make adjustments as needed.
- Apply data normalization rules to ensure you have properly structured tables.
If you have a small or medium-sized company and aren’t an expert in database development, you may need professional help. A Microsoft Access programmer will provide you with proper development, ensure easy migrations, and build a database where the information is easy to find.
Choose your data center wisely
Choosing a data center for your business is one of the most important things you will ever do. This center will be the place where you store invaluable mission-critical information. Also, this isn’t a decision you should make lightly, and here are some of the things you need to take into consideration:
- Location. Having a nearby data center is vital. Someone from your company needs to be able to reach the data center easily if you need an upgrade or someone needs to come and service a piece of your equipment.
- Scalability. Your provider should meet your needs and grow as your company grows. A good data center needs to have flexibility and expansion capability so you don’t have to worry about whether the provider will be able to store all of the data you collect.
- Deployment efficiency. When you choose a data center, you will probably want the infrastructure to be up and running as soon as possible. Ask potential vendors to give you timelines and choose one that will be efficient and fast.
- Reliability. A reliable data center has five 9s uptime, or in other words, they’re reliable for at least 99.999% of the time.
- Financial stability. You need to take the financial stability of your provider into account because if they aren’t financially stable, there is a high chance they will go out of business.
Finding a data center that checks all of the boxes can be difficult, especially when it comes to location. But not impossible. For example, a Michigan colocation center is perfect if you’re based in Michigan and want a data center that is close, reliable, and can meet your needs.
Make sure your data is clean and structured
Your data is useless if it is not clean, structured, and up to date. As much as 95% of businesses cite the need to manage unstructured data as a problem for their business, which you can avoid if you ensure your data is always available.
But why is this so important? Well if you don’t have good data, it will negatively impact customer satisfaction and trust, which will, in turn, lower your profits. Unclean data can result in inaccurate customer phone numbers, emails, and addresses, just to name a few examples.
Additionally, if you don’t clean and structure your data, you will end up with duplicate data and information you don’t need to store anymore. If you still store data from inactive customers, this only takes up space in your data center and makes it harder to find data from customers who are still active.
Make security a priority
Data breaches are always a big problem, especially if you store sensitive customer information such as names, addresses, and credit card information. An unsecured database can cause a hacker to break into your system and endanger all of your customers.
Keeping your data safe is one of the best ways you can increase customer satisfaction and keep your business in good standing. To ensure you have a secure database, you need to follow the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), even if you operate outside of the EU.
Final thoughts
Data makes the business world go round. It has a significant role in all of your departments from sales to marketing, helps you understand your customers better, and allows you to make more informed decisions and grow your business.
Managing all of the data you collect may seem difficult and overwhelming at first, but if you step back and listen to all of the tips you read about here, there won’t be any issues.