Data is important, especially in the world of business. With enough data, you can accurately understand just what your business needs to tick and, more importantly, what areas need improvement.
The World of Data
Data is big business. In fact, some would say it’s the only business in town. After all, without understanding your own data, you’ll never be able to accurately invest where it’s needed or know when and where to improve operations.
There’s a reason that the global data analytics market is worth an estimated $118.55 billion, with an annual growth rate of 13.8%, and that’s because it’s effective and essential in today’s data-driven world. This is particularly true with the rise of AI tools, which need massive datasets in order to train.
However, regardless of whether you’re developing your own AI tool or not, you need your data to work harder for you. You also, ideally, need it to work for less money.
The Cost of Keeping Data
Data management costs just keep rising, and that’s without considering the fact that there is a cap on how much data we can process. This is because there’s a limit to how much energy the IT sector can use and also a limit to the physical resources needed to power storage, AI systems, and even analytical tools.
Seagate, in a survey conducted amongst businesses with 1000+ employees, found that 52% of high-level executives saw the costs of their data management as unsustainable. Worse, 90% were concerned about the rising costs.
In 2022, IDC determined that businesses around the world were spending an average of $41.1 billion on their data management. This cost is only expected to grow, so if you aren’t currently doing all you can to lessen your data strain, then this guide will help. As a bonus, we’ll even get into how you can better use that data to boost your business’ decision-making and operations.
How to Reduce Data Management Costs
The first step is always to improve your data management. Streamlining data by improving how you organize it will only boost analytical and data governance initiatives further.
Centralize Your Data
Creating a data fabric that centralizes your data from all those accounts, computers, departments, and more is the single best thing you can do for your data. One, because it helps you fully see the big picture and gives analytical tools all the information that they need to work properly. Two, it’s essential to help you cut data management costs after the big move.
Data Standardization
One of the best ways to make centralized data work harder in analytics and data governance systems is to standardize it. This means making a metadata schematic that’s followed by absolutely everyone in your business. This way, all data is marked and labeled the same way, regardless of whether it was initially logged in the US or the UK. By labeling everything this way, you can find information faster and, more importantly, automated systems can work faster.
Remove Redundant Information
Once your data is centralized, you’ll be able to easily find redundant information. This means information that’s duplicated over and over since it was saved on separate systems in the past. Remove exact duplicates immediately. When it comes to older versions of files, try to either consolidate the file into one or remove the older versions of the file.
Compile Data
Gathering multiple reports into one is a simple, effective way to compile data, reduce the amount of space that information takes up, and prime your system for better analytics in the future. For example, putting together sales from every single department or office (on a global scale) will not only save on space (and therefore cost) but also make it easier to better understand sales and customer data on a global scale.
Invest in Sustainability Initiatives
There are many ways that you can reduce the running costs of managing your data simply by investing in sustainability initiatives. If you manage your own servers, for example, investing in a water recycling system that doesn’t waste water but replenishes it again and again through your cooling system can be a simple way to save water, save energy, and save money.
How to Boost Data Management Value
Now that you’ve streamlined and organized your data, it’s time to boost its value.
Use Master Data Governance
Master data governance is a key tool that lets you put all that master data and manage it in a way that gives you actionable insights. The goal is to make better decisions and improve operations by streamlining them – and that’s exactly what this type of application does. When you establish a cohesive system, you can increase the accuracy of your data and, most importantly, the total cost of ownership.
Give Employees Wider Access to Analytical Tools
You want every team to be working with top-notch data analytics, which means they need access to it. Now, the reason why many businesses don’t give employees full access is due to security concerns, and that is perfectly valid. That’s why it’s imperative you create user profiles that can be linked to specific data sets. For instance, someone in marketing has access to things like marketing and sales analytics, but they don’t have access to financial information. Role-based access control is an increasingly common method of security within businesses.
Invest in Data Literacy Programs
Of course, just because an employee can generate a report to see data in an understandable way does not mean that they’re ready to use that information. That’s why it’s key to also train your staff with the help of data literacy programs so that everyone can better use the tools you have invested in.
Track Your Efforts
You can even track how well your data fabric solution is going so that you understand the full ROI. Just keep in mind that it can be some time before you see big results, and that’s because fully cleaning up your data and then learning how to use it (even with the help of automated systems) takes time. The larger your business, the more time it will take. So long as you are tracking results, however, you’ll be able to see slight improvements and be able to make better business decisions regarding your data in the future.
