Are You Prepared for Data Management? The Battle for the Future of Data is On!

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Today, businesses are capturing and collecting data like never before. And this is only accelerating. According to IDC, the volume of digital data will explode from 250 billion gigabytes in 2016 to an astonishing 3 trillion gigabytes by 2020. But what does this mean for your business? There’s a lot at stake. Inadequate data management will cost you time, money, and reputation. If you aren’t prepared for the coming data management revolution, your business could be at risk of:

Data Quality Issues

Data quality is a serious business risk with major implications for your data management strategy. Around 70% of data analyst’s time is spent cleansing and correcting data. With so much effort focused on data quality issues, there is less focus on growing your business through strategic insights and analysis of that data. Moreover, inadequate data quality can lead to serious brand trust issues if customers can’t trust the data you’re using.

Loss of Consumer Trust

If your business isn’t using the data it collects, you’re missing out on valuable insights and strategic opportunities. In many cases, businesses are collecting data without a clear plan for its use. This can erode customer trust by suggesting you don’t have a clear purpose for the data collected. For example, imagine a scenario where a retailer is collecting data on its customers’ purchase history. However, they have no clear plan for what they will do with this data. It’s likely that this will erode customer trust. When customers don’t know why you’re collecting their data, they will be less likely to shop with you again.

Organizational Silo Problems

Data is best managed when it’s integrated, standardized, and easily accessible across the entire organization. However, many businesses struggle with siloed data across their organization. This can result from a variety of factors. Businesses may have departments that collect data in different formats. Or their data may be collected, but never shared across departments. In either case, you could be collecting valuable data without easy access to it. This could severely limit your ability to leverage data for strategic insights and decision-making.

A Lack of Visibility and Agility

To be truly data-driven and future-ready, your business will need to be able to react quickly to changing trends and customer needs. To do this, you will need to be able to easily access your data and make strategic use of it. However, many businesses struggle to gain visibility and easy access to their data. This makes it difficult to respond quickly to strategic opportunities. In fact, it could take weeks or months to get the data you need to make a strategic decision. By this time, the opportunity to act may have passed.

Conclusion

Data is the lifeblood of business. It tells us what customers want, what they’re interested in, and how we can best serve them. However, this data is useless if it’s not managed properly. In order to make the most of your data, you must ensure it is clean, standardized, and easily accessible across your organization. Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone. There are a number of solutions designed to help businesses of all sizes manage their data more effectively.

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