Data is crucial property for any business, and managing it well can make the difference between whether a company sinks or swims. But data management isn’t usually as high on the priority list as it should be, especially for small businesses who are juggling multiple priorities. Here are some key tips on how your small company should approach data management.
Done well, data management saves companies time and money, while improving sales and client relationships. Each customer you have, or every transaction that comes your way as a business generates data. With every business process that takes place, this can quickly become a huge amount of data. By investing in data management, this data can turn into information that can improve your business. The ability to analyze data will enable you to target future customers more effectively, while storing data efficiently will enable you to find information quickly and easily. Furthermore, gathering data through the course of your work comes with a responsibility to keep it secure.
The reasons for having effective data management strategies and processes are clear. So how should small businesses with limited time and resources deal with the mountain of data that comes their way?
Consider DataOps
The latest approach to data management, DataOps – or ‘Data Operations’ – brings together technologies and processes in an organization to better manage data. The idea is to automate as much of data management as possible through a well-considered collection of tools. The DataOps approach can cover everything from personnel information to analyzing customer data, and works in an agile way so your business is constantly improving in the data realm. Small business owners should gain a better understanding of DataOps to see how it could totally change the way their business handles data for the better.
Focus On Compliance
One of the key things small businesses must do is to ensure they comply with any data management and data protection laws. The exact rules for compliance depend on both where your business is located, and where you do business. In the United States, there are dozens of federal and state laws that relate to data protection, so it’s important to educate yourself about the ones that are relevant to you. It may even be wise to ask for legal advice is legislation isn’t your area of expertise. Business owners must also be aware of the data protection laws in the countries where they do business. For example, those who have customers in the European Union must follow the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to ensure personal data is safeguarded.
Keep Data Secure
Company and customer data is truly valuable, so the one thing you will want to do is keep it safe. If you get hacked and your customers’ data becomes vulnerable, you could be at risk of receiving hefty fines if your data security processes were found to be inadequate. Data breaches also do nothing for the brand and reputation of your business. Equally, any data that relates to how you do business would be very valuable to your competitors, so you do not want this being exposed either. The key to data security is having multiple levels of security. First and foremost, this means that all data should be encrypted, so that if anyone did hack your systems, it would be difficult for them to decrypt the information. Other data security measures include firewalls, anti-malware software and multi-factor authentication. Training staff in good data security is also crucial.
Multiple Backups
Backing up data is another must in terms of data security, and this is especially important in case your systems become infected with a virus or malware. Again, backups should be done in more than one way for maximizing data security. Firstly, ensure your business network is backed up regularly to another server. Depending on how much data your business collects, this could be done once a day or once a week. A business network is for saving all the fundamentals of a business – including emails, website, customer and client data.
Consider additional backup methods for all your key information as well. You could opt for secure backups on the cloud, or external hard drives. USB drives can also be a useful and easy way to backup key data. Whatever your approach, all staff should be made aware of the data backup processes that are expected of them too.
Maintain Systems
Not everyone is aware of the fact that databases, hard drives and USB drives degrade over time. This means there is no single and long-lasting solution for backing information up. Ultimately, businesses need to plan a regular schedule of maintenance for all backup solutions, replacing old backups with new backups on more modern pieces of technology. This is the only way to keep the data you need on a long-term basis, so make maintenance plans well before your equipment will degrade too much.