Kaboutjie SA Mommy Blogs by Lynne Huysamen
Running your own business while being a busy mother comes with many challenges. One of these challenges is managing all the information that your business accumulates over time. Master data refers to the important information that your company collects that is essential to the functioning of the business.
This data includes non-transactional data such as employee details, customer details, supplier lists, product names, materials, pricing and more.
All this data is essential to the running of any business, without it no business transactions would be able to take place. All of this data comes from different sources and it may be stored and utilized in different databases within a company.
Here’s how to utilize Master Data Management to improve your Mompreneur Business:
Taking Ownership Of Your Data Management
The first thing you need to do is decide where the primary responsibility of data management and strategy lies. You may want to employ a Chief Data Officer or make another employee responsible.
When you include data strategy into your business approach and make someone responsible for manage it you have begun to take ownership of your data management.
Creating A Connected Data System
You need to set up a system for collecting, processing, storing, analyzing and consuming data across your business. Systems need to be connected and your data format needs to be standardized.
Your data needs to be easily accessible and system needs to have data coherence and visibility. It is also important to ensure that there is no data duplication.
Making use of a Master Data Management system makes a lot of sense since the process of collecting, managing and analyzing data is a very time consuming process that is made much easier using software. This will in the long run help to save the company money, time and resources.
Managing Your Metadata
Metadata provides additional information about your primary data including where it came from, when it was created and it’s location. Creating a business information structure that is consistent and managing your metadata is essential for accessing, referencing and consuming your business data.
Planning Your Data Delivery
Once you have your data properly processed you need to decide how you will format it and deliver it across your business. This is especially relevant if your business operates multiple ERP (business process management) and CRM (customer relationship management) technologies and e-commerce platforms.
The delivery of data is about making sure that the right data reaches the right people at the right time to enable them to make informed and calculated decisions based on insight gained from important company data.
Adopting Consistent Policies
Once you have a data system in place you can start to work on data governance by creating consistent business policies around the handling and the use of data. These policies should address the physical, virtual and cloud conditions. All your company information needs be classified and regulations set for access, retention, distribution and deletion.
The process of data management is often an evolving process for many companies and being able to set company-wide protocols is quite the achievement.
