This quote applies to all spheres of life, especially in the business sector. No company can grow and develop if it is standing still, circling old-fashioned methods and practices and not keeping up with today’s trends. A business becomes successful only when pushed forward, implementing well-thought-of plans and systems that facilitate internal processes in organizations. One of these systems is data management, which today is done in a new, improved, and technologically advanced way. Let’s go over the details of this business empowerment tool.
What is data management?
To start, let’s cover the basics. Data management, obviously, it is managing data in the company. Not so obviously, it is a very complex process that is responsible for lead generation, lead conversion, and maximizing profits. Data management consists of acquiring, evaluating, storing, protecting, and processing the data one company receives in digital form in order to ensure its proper use by the users.
Why store data?
Data gives real-time information about the consumers’ behavior, opportunities, and trends in the niche with one purpose – to create a superior customer experience and make huge revenues.
Depending on the size of the business, data comes in different quantities. The bigger the company, the more substantial amount of data it is piling. To understand all of it, data must be gathered, minimise, and stored on servers and clouds so that it can be automatically processed and validated. For that purpose, data management systems are incorporated into the organization. The key benefit of this is making essential functions more straightforward and less time-exhausting.
Data management challenge
The process doesn’t end when data is collected. The next step is analyzing it and making it useful. Before data management systems, people used to do this manually. These are called data analysts. Today, with the advancement of technology, all the processes that refer to analytics are also done automatically. However, a big challenge arises. What happens is companies organize and categorize data based on the answers they want to get from it. But, to receive the right answers, companies must look for the correct data in the first place. How could companies know where to look for such data?
If you are facing the same problem, it is recommended that you consult an expert or data management company as starting on the right track is extremely important for all the follow-up processes.
What can a data analyst do for you?
These are the data wizards. Data Wizards turn incomprehensible data into simple information that can be used to improve the business and facilitate business decisions. They follow the trends important for the niche of your business and identify what type of data can be used to achieve a certain business goal. Generally, they analyze and interpret data the same way a language translator translates utterances from one into another language. Once they finish with their analysis, they make reports with ready-to-use data for you or the organization’s responsible person.
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Some of their responsibilities include the collection and interpretation of data, analyzing results, creating reports, validating patterns and trends, establishing business data needs along with a business team, and so on. A good data analyst should be great at Maths, Statistics, Computer Science, and Economics and, most importantly, have relevant experience in the field.
Benefits of Data Management
There are four major benefits of data management.
Top-level productivity
Productivity levels will rise as the company becomes more data-organized. The team members will have quick access to relevant information.
Cost-efficiency
By managing your data, you will be able to regain control over the costs in the company. Budget money will be distributed appropriately, and the labor force will focus on finishing more varied and creative tasks.
Decreased security risks
Managing your data correctly will give you insight into how to improve your business prospects and help you minimize the risks of breaching the security levels of sensitive data in your company. Besides, with data management, you can be sure that data won’t fall into the wrong hands. Basically, the data management system will protect your data from theft and attacks.
On-point decisions
With reports of analyzed data, you will be able to make instant decisions that might be of enormous significance when it comes to beating your competitors on the market. The interpreted data shows real-time behavior and progress, thus enabling the users to make accurate decisions.
No data loss
Last, but not least is the benefit of not losing any data when incorporating a data management system. All of the stored data will be there until further notice, protected and backed up, and even retrievable if something happens to the original copies.
Data Hygiene
Another important aspect of storing and keeping data in the system is proper data hygiene. To keep it neat, tidy, and organized, you start with the volume and the conditions it is in. Neglecting to take care of data will cost you money, and even more importantly, your marketing campaigns will fail. Add to the list of unwanted activities the following ones:
- High bounce rates or invalid records
- Poor segmentation and targeting
- Duplicate records resulting in split customer tracking
- Useless lead scoring because of missing data points.
Most popular data management platforms
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift is a cloud data warehouse, part of Amazon Web Services that powers analytical workloads for different kinds of companies and startups. It is considered to be one of the world’s fastest cloud data warehouses that makes it easy for you to query petabytes of structured and semi-structured data in your system. It is also considered to be one of the least expensive systems as you can scale up to petabytes for under $1000 per terabyte per year. With Amazon Redshifts, you can simplify the data analysis process and efficiently integrate it with other Amazon Web Services, including the Amazon S3.
Google Big Query
Google’s data management system is called Big Query which guaranteed business agility. With it, you can analyze petabytes of data using ANSI SQL, receive insights into a trusted and more secured platform scalable for your needs, and get an insight into proposed multi-cloud analytics solutions.
Adobe Audience Manager
The data management platform helps you understand data and enables you to identify your most valuable segments and use them across any digital channel. It does data collection, data classification, ad network integration, and analytics. Adobe Audience Manager also offers rich information by third parties and has an intuitive user interface.
It is good to mention Marketo, a system that is also a product of Adobe, that is also used for data management. This offers extra flexibility, as it has a lot of features that can be used for proper data handling. It is also very straightforward to use and can mitigate any issues of users. The best thing about Marketo is its customer support – considered as such by the Marketo community. If your choice is Marketo, make sure the pricing fits you as usually it is bought as a premium market used by more prominent companies.
Snowflake
Unique name, unique service – that is what Snowflake has to offer. It has a different solution style than any other data management platform – it provides data management as a service. It also has extraordinary speed – in just 45 minutes, it can run an entire set of monthly reports. Just to compare – the same amount of data other platforms can analyze in two to three days. It also offers more convenient ways of paying – upfront, pay-as-you-go, and different monthly pricing plans.
Oracle BlueKai
On the list of most popular data management platforms is also Oracle’s Blue Kai, which helps organizations lead campaigns on their mobiles, online and offline for the chosen audiences. This platform increases your campaigns’ effectiveness by making sure you understand what devices and environments your ideal audience uses. It takes pride in always maintaining reliability and freshness.
The Bottom Line
Data management is crucial for the development of your business, regardless of how small or big it is. It provides real facts about the condition of your data. It does all the necessary tasks to convert it into usable, understandable information based on which the managers can make business decisions.
Usually, the integration process and data system maintenance are done by data management companies. It is a complex process that needs someone with the expertise and skills to find, store accurately, and use the collected data. The increased productivity in the organization and the freed time for other tasks are both benefits that top the list of values you get when using such a system.
Finally, whichever platform or tool you choose, it is recommended to start as soon as possible because your competitors are probably already using it. They are already collecting leads, analyzing them and converting them making them far ahead of you winning the online game.
Author Bio:-
Hannah Derby is a digital marketer who is enthusiastic about trying out the newest trends and innovations in the digital marketing industry and helping businesses advance. She is also using her knowledge and expertise gained from a JTF Marketing training that raised her interest in the marketing automation industry.
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