Data is essential to any organization and is the foundation of decision-making. To ensure your decisions are smart and accurately made, it is crucial for your data to be clean. If you’re not evaluating your data cleanliness regularly, you could be at risk of making inaccurate decisions without knowing until it’s too late.
Clean data is accurate, complete, and consistent data that has been validated to not have errors. It can easily be accessed, organized, and structured to allow for better interpretation and analysis.
1) Current State: Start by reviewing your data management processes and understanding where your data cleanliness currently stands.
2) Ask the Key Questions: How is my data recorded/entered? Is this process streamlined and consistent? Do I have a way to easily review, diagnose, and repair my data?
3) Audit, Audit, Audit: Regularly auditing your data will help you know where inconsistencies are happening and allow you to promptly address them.
4) Consistent Naming Convention: Clean data starts with consistency. In an effort to achieve consistency, you’ll need to ensure the way you manage your data is the same across the board. We suggest utilizing a naming convention tool or creating a process to help ensure and streamline this consistency.
5) Data Visualization Tool: One of the best ways to not only monitor your data, but also measure it, is by utilizing a data visualization tool. Examples of these tools include Tableau, Microsoft BI, and Google Data Studio. All of these options have a multitude of use cases and allow teams to monitor and track performance, conduct quality analysis checks, and easily report on wins and losses.
6) Data Backup: Last but certainly not least, backing up your data is a crucial step in the process. Data backup ensures your data is secure while also allowing you to revert back to data prior to changes being implemented.
A company with data can compete, a company with clean data can succeed. If you’re ready to compete but uncertain where to begin with your data cleaning, RADaR can help.
