Data management gives businesses more confidence in their data and helps make data more easily accessible across the organization. When business users can gain easy access to the data they need to make decisions, and they trust that the data is up to date and accurate, they can efficiently respond to changing market conditions. Data management can also help limit data silos — where different groups within the organization have different versions of the truth.
Good data management helps your organization scale as the volume and velocity of data grows. It facilitates audit and compliance functions and can make it easier for your organization to take advantage of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) tools, that analyze large volumes of data for unique and predictive insights.
Key data management benefits include:
Eradicate data redundancy.
Many businesses use multiple systems that each store business data. Often, data is duplicated across these systems. For example, product information could be stored in point of sales, manufacturing and inventory systems. Data stored in multiple locations can become inconsistent and is often stored in different formats. Data management systems aim to provide a single, accurate source of data for analysis. ETL processes pull data from different systems, resolve inconsistencies and cleanse the data to remove errors. The data is then stored in a data warehouse or data lake.
Improve data sharing.
In the past, it was typically very difficult for organizations to share data with business partners or even among their own business units. In the early days of data warehouses, for example, it was hard to share the entire volume of data contained within a single database, so any data sharing was typically limited to a subset of reports.
Now, in many cases it is important to share the entire data set in order to support advanced data analysis techniques based on data science and AI. The trend toward scalable, object-based cloud storage makes it much easier to securely share large sets of data with other organizations, especially when it’s combined with effective governance and cataloging processes that enable organizations to understand exactly which information is contained within each data set and whether it should be shared. While security is always a concern with sharing data across organizations, data loss prevention tools can be used to add a layer of protection by providing controlled access to data over a limited period.
Tighten data privacy and security.
Data security and privacy are important functions of data management. With a growing number of regulations such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and HIPAA, the risks of failing to secure your data can be extremely significant. Effective security depends heavily on data governance and data catalogs, which allow you to know where sensitive data is stored, whether it should be encrypted and which users and groups should have access. In the event of a data breach, the metadata in data catalogs can allow you to understand the scope of the data that has been compromised, which can dramatically limit potential fines.
Aid backups and recovery.
In the age of prevalent and potent ransomware attacks, backups are top of mind for any organization. Data management plays an important role in creating a backup and recovery strategy that matches your company’s priorities and data model. By cataloging your data assets, you can understand which of those data sets are the most critical to your business. Why is this information important for backup and recovery? One reason is that it may affect your backup frequency because, in most cases, you will want to minimize the potential data loss for critical systems. Even more important, it helps you plan your recovery. In the case of an attack or a natural disaster, you almost certainly won’t have enough human or network bandwidth to restore all your systems at once. Understanding which systems are most critical helps you build a well-crafted recovery plan to help get your business back online.
Whether you manage your own infrastructure or use cloud-based services, it is also important to know whether your backups are immutable and how they are stored. Immutable means that once written, the files can never be updated — or, in the event of a ransomware attack, encrypted by attackers and made inaccessible. Air-gapped means that the backups are stored on inaccessible media. In the old days, this meant storing backup tapes in a metal box. Now it typically means offline storage in a separate data center.
Create real-time data consistency.
When companies start using data analysis and business intelligence tools, they often want to include additional data sources to enrich their analysis. Many businesses also need to make decisions based on rapidly changing data, so they want to obtain data for analysis in real time or as quickly as possible.
Traditionally most data warehouses and analysis projects have used a batch process, loading new data every night or perhaps every four hours. That’s because many data management systems have mature ETL processes that are straightforward to implement.
To deliver real-time data, however, you may need to capture data streams from various data sources. Data management helps companies achieve this goal. It allows you to better understand which data sets need to be captured in real time to help inform your business decisions. Data catalogs can also provide information about when each data set is updated so that you can understand how current the data is.
Key Benefits of Data Management
| Eradicate data redundancy | Data stored in multiple locations can become inconsistent and is often saved in different formats. Data management systems aim to provide a single, accurate source of data for analysis. |
| Improve data sharing | Data management systems help ensure consistent data is shared securely among all users. Cloud-based data management systems facilitate sharing large amounts of data. |
| Tighten data privacy and security | Data management systems help the organization focus its security efforts on the most critical data assets. They help the company understand where sensitive data is stored, whether it should be encrypted and which users and groups should have access. |
| Improve backups and recovery | Data management helps companies create and manage backup approaches tailored to the data. It helps set appropriate backup frequencies based on the importance of the data and minimize recovery time in the event of a problem. |
| Real-time data consistency | Modern data management systems help businesses capture data streams and share information in real time. |