The Importance of Data Organization for Your Company

Effectively managing and organizing data is crucial to your company’s success.

Without proper data organization, you’ll lose track of orders, miss out on analytic insights, and be left behind by competitors who use hard data to make informed decisions. 

Data Cleanup 

Using data is essential in today’s competitive business environment. Effectively utilizing data can help you make better decisions by providing insights into consumer behavior, products, and operational efficiency. However, the insights you gain through data are only as good as the numbers you use. 

Data cleaning is the process of “removing or fixing corrupted, inaccurate, improperly formatted, incomplete, or duplicate data in a dataset”. This is an important first step, as you don’t want your data analysis to be undermined by faulty inputs. 

Start the data cleaning process by removing duplicate observations. Duplicates are usually easy to find as most data organization software can filter figures to show duplicates quickly. 

Once you’ve eliminated duplicates, focus on removing irrelevant observations from your data set. Removing irrelevant observations will give you greater clarity and ensure that your analysis is more efficient. 

You should now have the data set you want in front of you. However, before you start using data, you may need to remove anomalous findings. Some major outliers in your data set can skew your findings. So, pay particular attention to outliers in your data set and remove anything that may have been improperly entered. 

Securing Your Data 

Once you’ve cleaned up your data set, you need to store it in a secure and safe place. Much as you wouldn’t keep sensitive physical documents in a desk drawer, you shouldn’t keep important digital documents in insecure folders. 

Establish a clear protocol for data access to reduce the risk of phishing and corporate espionage. Phishing occurs when someone in your organization is contacted by a fraudster who is pretending to be a legitimate contact. There are many different types of phishing, like Pharming and Trap Phishing. A secure data protocol can prevent breaches and mistakes from occurring. 

Start by educating your workforce and installing anti-phishing software. You can also encourage staff to use a VPN when they are working with sensitive data as this will reduce the chance of a phisher identifying your business as a target. 

Keep all of your important data behind a two-factor authentication wall. Two-factor authentication is a simple but important step towards better data security and organization at your workplace. 

Data Organization Education

A clear data management strategy ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the organization and storage of data for your business. However, many employees do not have the skills necessary to effectively record, organize, and store data. 

Rather than cutting employees off from data sets, consider educating your staff. Training days and extra education can make a big difference to your overall data management strategy. Even a few hours of training will ensure that all employers are collecting, storing, and analyzing data while using best practices. 

If you notice some employees using an alternative method for data management, listen to them and find out why they have strayed from normal protocols. You may find that your current data management strategy is inefficient and that your employees can give key insights to streamline the process. 

Conclusion

Data organization will streamline your decision-making process and give you access to more accurate insights. Organization starts with a thorough clean-up of all your data sets. Be sure to eliminate any faulty inputs and pay extra attention to anomalies. Ensure your data is secured in a safe digital space with two-factor authentication and educate your employees to ensure they don’t fall foul of phishing schemes.