According to IDC, the amounts of data that businesses need to manage increases by 40% each year. Of course, the quantity aspect is just but one of the concerns. The other concern lies in the equally growing number of data formats each business has to handle.
The need to centralize, organize, and make the data accessible to stakeholders brings us to the aspect of enterprise data management. But what does that mean?
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What Is Enterprise Data Management?
Enterprise Data Management or EDM refers to a set of practices, processes, and activities that an organization or business use to integrate, secure, govern, and disseminate its data. Notably, accuracy, quality, availability, and accessibility are vital aspects that EDM aims to address.
Managing your operational, strategic, network, network, and unstructured data can be a hit or a miss without EDM. And with a large quantity and varying data formats to deal with, analyzing, securing, and availing everything can be a nightmare.
It is common to find financial information, case studies, inventory details, images, and videos as part of what you store and use from time to time. Besides, the digitization of enterprises and digital marketing will also generate unstructured data from the Internet of Things (IoT), social media, and mobile devices.
Essential Pillars of Enterprise Data Management
1. Data Integration
Data integration refers to combining data from several sources into a single, accessible point. This process uses various integration forms such as visualization, federation, propagation, and consolidation. Data integration improves collaboration, saves time, minimizes errors, and speeds up business decisions since company information is accessible from a single point.
2. Master Data Management
Master Data Management (MDM) and EDM are very different things. MDM is the process that reconciles all the integrated data to ensure that only the correct version is usable. Data stewards use modern MDM tools to remove obsoletes and duplicates.
4. Data Governance and Stewardship
Data governance involves a set of systems and disciplines that reinforce and assess the success of the MDM component of enterprise data management. It assigns specific responsibilities to specific individuals who create internal and external accountability structures to streamline data flow. It also protects user privacy, monitors data quality, encourages ethical responsibility, and monitors adherence to rules and regulations.
5. Data Security
With cybercriminals always prying for data, data security is integral to your enterprise data management strategy. It uses tools and firewalls to ensure that you do not lose your data. Of course, this applies to both data on transit and at rest. The protection goes beyond putting up anti-leak and anti-theft measures to uphold integrity by preventing destruction and corruption.
6. Data Warehouse or Data Storage
Finally, all the data should undergo proper storage and warehousing. This process refers to a repository that stores both your current and historical data, whichever name you give it. You can choose on-premises or cloud-based storage options. But since this is often a critical pillar of your enterprise data management strategy, you may want to consider storage as a service model from a third party.
EDM Strategy Best Practices
A successful EDM process will depend on managing your end-to-end data management process. This should include data ingestion, reporting, analysis, transformation, and storage. You can only achieve your EDM strategy by adhering to best practices, including;
- Defining the process, goals, scope, and how to measure success
- Determine the standards and policies that you intend to use
- Continuous performance reports
- Involve and educate critical players on their objectives and roles
- Emphasize on quality
Understanding and implementing your enterprise data management strategy successfully is vital for your business’s safety, agility, and productivity. But this is sometimes hectic if you fully want to rely on an in-house data management team. With the radical technological developments and changes, an in-house IT team may not be up to the task. Thus, just like with storage as a service, you can find a reputable team dedicated to data management to handle your EDM.
