Data Management Tips for the Small Business

With the digitalization of the modern business happening rather rapidly, many organizations still don’t really understand the major benefits that come with it. These shifts give the average business nearly twice the amount of data to manage (and to use). If you have the feeling that your business is lagging behind in this area, we will describe what parts of business you can improve by utilizing your organization’s data. 

Comprehensive Data Management

Businesses can’t operate on conjecture. They need reliable data to help them make determinations about their business. If you are like many other businesses that have made strides in their digitalization efforts, it brings a fair amount of automation. This automation becomes vital for enhancing a business' overall performance. This data provides in-depth information about every customer, employee, and transaction made in the course of doing business. If your business’ data is clearly laid out, it is much easier to analyze. Let’s look at a few ways organized data can help improve your business.

Managing Cybersecurity Threats

Security is one of the most important aspects of maintaining reliable data management. For smaller businesses, it can be a challenge in that they typically don’t often find the value in their data that larger enterprises do. This is unfortunate as any business can benefit from the strategic benefits of organized and secure data. Part of keeping this data organized is being prepared for the attacks that may or may not come. 

Building More Value from Data

Smaller businesses have smaller budgets. This is obvious and means that the tools and strategies used to manage and use data have to be more cost-effective. By intentionally implementing strategies with these budget constraints in mind, a business can find the solutions they are looking for while reducing or eliminating redundancy, the big money-waster when it comes to digital systems. 

Choosing the Right Data to Preserve

For the professional trying to determine what data their small business finds actionable (or valuable), it can be difficult to know which data to prioritize. This is why it is so important to work with IT professionals who have experience with setting up data reporting constructs as well as data redundancy systems to ensure that if something happens, the important data is secure, or at the very least able to be recovered quickly. 

Two Simple Data Management Tips

Obviously when you run a business, data is everywhere. Let’s look at two tips to help you to manage your data correctly. 

Keep It Simple

For small businesses, it can be intimidating trying to push for enhanced digitalization, but really the digital data your business has is no different than the paper copies found in the file folder of yesterday. You will need to arrange data clearly in a database with other software such as a DBMS (database management system) to manage all the data. 

Trash Redundancies

Redundant data does not delete itself, so to keep unusable data from mucking up business you are going to want to get rid of the data that doesn’t have any value. The more copies you have of the same data, the more it could result in poor reporting down the road. Of course, this does not apply to your data backup strategy, but that’s the exception that proves the rule.

By outsourcing your data management, you will get a professional perspective about what types of data have to be prioritized, how to go about ensuring that it is managed correctly, and how to ensure that it is secure and reliable. At Washington Works, our IT professionals work with DC Metro businesses of all types, providing our technicians with the insight that will help you build and capitalize on your data management strategies.

Don’t let your data management pitfalls hold your business back. Give us a call today at 301-571-5040 to learn more.