Steps to Strengthen Your Enterprise Data Management Strategy

Data is, well, everywhere. And everyone wants to put it to work. However, the world also realizes that lacking a strategic approach to leveraging data is counter-productive. This is where enterprise data management comes in. In today's data-driven business landscape, having a robust enterprise data management strategy is not just an advantage but a necessity. Efficient data management (EDM) ensures that your organization can harness the power of data for informed decision-making, regulatory compliance, and overall operational excellence.

With this blog, I'll cover essential steps to strengthen enterprise data management strategy.

What is Enterprise Data Management?

EDM is the process of managing all of a given organization's data, no matter where it came from or in which format it is. Now, to delve into the concept a bit — EDM is essentially a collection of technologies, practices, and strategies companies use to gather, store, organize, safeguard, and use their data assets efficiently and effectively.

In today's data-driven business landscape, where organizations are compelled to contend with copious amounts of data generated from countless different sources, such as customer interactions, transactions, social media, and IoT devices, — EDM has been rendered a must-have, instead of being a mere nice-to-have. Why? Well, because EDM can, among other things, help companies with ensuring high data quality, focus on data governance, and better protect their data.

Before you start looking for an enterprise data management services provider, what do you say we first look at how you can build a rock-solid EDM strategy? Yeah? Let's go.

Steps To Strength Enterprise Data Management Strategy

Here are the essential steps to strengthen your enterprise data management strategy:

• Determine business goals: The first step in creating a robust EDM strategy is clearly defining the business goals the EDM strategy will seek to support. This involves identifying the focus areas wherein data can be put to work to help improve business performance. Then, one must also establish KPIs that can be measured to assess the success of their EDM strategy. These KPIs could include data quality metrics, security incident rates, data-driven revenue increases, etc.
• Identify data processes: Once you have established the business goals, it is crucial to map out the current data processes within the organization. You can start by conducting an inventory of the data assets to understand what types of data are collected and stored, where the data is stored, and how it is processed. Then, move on to mapping how data moves through the organization and, eventually, data lifecycle management, i.e., defining how data is created, used, archived, and ultimately disposed of.
• Data governance: Given how sensitive the nature of data is, it ought to come as no surprise that data governance has been firmly established as a critical aspect of EDM. After all, it ensures that data is handled responsibly and ethically. So, set out a data governance framework, including policies, procedures, roles, and responsibilities. Also, do not forget to appoint data stewards, i.e., individuals responsible for specific data domains. This is especially important because these individuals help ensure data quality but also help enforce data standards and serve as subject-matter experts for their assigned data domains.
• Employee training and execution: Now, to successfully implement your EDM strategy, it is of vital importance to train employees on data management practices, the importance of data governance, etc. Once that is done, implement the tools and technologies to support data management. Now, you can move on to executing the EDM strategy.

Putting together and implementing an EDM strategy is an ongoing process. And you can ease this process by hiring an expert enterprise data management services provider!