Information is at the heart of decision-making. By changing the data that the decision makers operate on, the organization will get a different output. Therefore, obtaining the most complete and relevant information is the key to the effectiveness of all actions. But how to filter out precisely the necessary and critically important information without which the undertaken measures will lead in a counterproductive direction? The answer is concealed in effective data management data management carried out in accordance with algorithms that optimize the mechanisms of data processing, storage, and exchange.
What Prevents Getting the Most Out of Data
Withholding Data at All Levels of the Organizational Hierarchy
There is a widespread tendency to hide unfavorable information. Management does this so as not to sow panic among subordinates, while grassroots workers – for fear of losing their jobs. As a result, a disadvantageous side in the activities of a company or organization may remain implicit for a long time.
Data Contamination
In the process of its circulation, data are overgrown with unreliable information, And the more difficult it is to get rid of it, the more it manages to escape through large channels. For example, one of the employees made a mistake in the report and indicated the wrong numbers. If this is not noticed in time, they will be duplicated by many other instances, which perceived them as reliable.
Delay in Information Exchange
If the data is stored in different places and there is no single register of their accounting, retrieving it at the right time can be a difficult task.
- In the pre-digital era, this corresponded to a situation where the performance data of each department of the organization was stored in many folders, desktops, and safes. It was not always possible to find them at the right time.
- In the modern digital world, this means the absence of a clear and transparent system for distributing information according to the places of its aggregation. In this case, the employee knows for sure that this information is stored somewhere, but they cannot say exactly in which of the many folders.
What Does Effective Data Management Include?
What should be the mechanisms for working with information to detect errors on time, filter out "garbage" data, and extract objective data rather than just those that are beneficial to the person who announces them?
Data management is like ascertaining the implementation of all information exchange processes according to a checklist. The key pillars to this process are as follows:
- Control over the receipt and transmission of data. In the first case, it is necessary to make sure that the information in full has been received from all the necessary departments or key persons. In the second – establish strict filters on who has the right to access the information received. This is important not only because of economic security issues but also for organizational hygiene. Overloading with unnecessary information not only does not contribute to increasing labor productivity but also slows it down.
- Systematization of data. Within the organization, a data storage map should be developed, which makes it easy to find the requested information.
- Storage method. The choice of storage method depends on the number of persons who must have uninterrupted access to this information. If it is only one person, it can be stored in a safe or on a hard drive. But if certain information is constantly needed by a wide range of employees, it should be placed in cloud storage to minimize the time spent gaining access to this information.
The clearer the algorithms for obtaining, exchanging, and storing data in an organization, the less the problem of missing or leaking the necessary information will be. Both of these impede the effective operation of the company. Having coped with the task of effective data management, the company will significantly establish itself in objective reality, which is not distorted by either excess or lack of information.
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