Why data management best practices are worth integrating into your project
Proper data management practices are a project manager’s best friend. Collecting, storing, analyzing, and reporting on your data are fundamental disciplines when controlling a project of any size, because good information is the bedrock of decision-making, and correct management of data allows you access to timely, accurate, and actionable information.
Failure to prioritize the integration and accessibility of your company’s data can cause inefficiency ripples within the organization because information may not then be available to allow robust decision-making. It is, therefore, crucial to understand and implement data management best practices in order to make your data work for you.
Make Your Data Accessible
Data that cannot be accessed might as well not exist. It’s no use holding detailed datasets about important topics if those datasets can’t be found, easily searched, or reported on. Ensure that all of the data you hold is appropriately named and indexed to allow it to be accessed by your project team. This might mean introducing naming conventions and a rigid filing structure and ensuring that your team members adhere to them. It might also mean building a standard set of reports to save time if people regularly want to access the same information sets from within your data.
Additionally, in today’s global workplaces, accessibility also relates to the ease of accessing information from anywhere and at any time. This means storing your data online or in the cloud to make it available 24/7 and 365 days a year. Paper records held in filing cabinets do not lead to an efficiently-run project when team members are scattered across multiple sites or in multiple time zones; instead, wherever possible, you want your data to be available instantly online.
Ensure the right people see the right things
Not everyone involved in a project needs access to every piece of data relating to that project. Some data may be privileged, sensitive, or just plain irrelevant to some in the project team.
Create a clear outline of what roles within the organization need access to what information, and assign those permissions accordingly. Often data is only relevant to specific team members, and it can confuse matters or lead to data breaches if access is granted wider. Taking the step of controlling access will also strengthen your security policy, as the more individuals with access, the greater the risk of your data being compromised. It will also prevent individuals from becoming overloaded with irrelevant information.
Integration is your friend in data management
Data integration is a crucial part of data management: simply put, your data systems should talk to each other. Data held in silos in standalone systems doesn’t work hard enough for you. This is because siloed data doesn’t offer you the chance to design streamlined workflows based on multiple datasets, build reports drawing on data from several different sources, or carry out any number of other tasks made more straightforward by integration. Instead, it creates a burden for someone to go and manually extract information and then analyze it separately; not the most efficient use of time.
Create links between your data systems to gain the ability to build integrated reports or design workflows drawing on information from multiple different places. Talking to an expert like DRMcNatty about how your systems can link together can offer huge cost and time savings in terms of the increased efficiencies achieved from better-integrated data.
A trusted data management partner can make all the difference
Implementing data management best practices can bring considerable benefits to any project or organization. The ability to search and report on good quality data is a make or break for efficient project management. Failure to prioritize data can lead to a breakdown in decision-making further down the line. This is because without good data management, decisions may be made based on incorrect or incomplete information.
Creating integrated and robust data management practices can be a daunting task, however, and that’s why choosing a trusted data management partner to help you take the necessary steps can make all the difference. At DRMcNatty, we can help future-proof your data and its value by designing database solutions that integrate the critical data streams across your organization and help you predict and plan for future business needs. If you’d value a conversation about your data management strategy, get in touch with us today.
