Data and analytics have rapidly become the most important strategic differentiator for successful, high-growth firms. Data is among your most precious assets, whether you own a small local business or a large enterprise. However, a UK study shows that poor data handling costs businesses 10% to 30% of their revenues. Since cost reduction is crucial for small businesses, consider the tips below to improve your business data management.
Research has shown that over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created daily. Your business may have data on your customers' preferences, behaviour, and operational success. However, there is a good chance you are underutilising the information to its full potential. Consider the data your business collects and how you can use them to better predict consumer demands, uncover opportunities to upsell or cross-sell items, and enhance overall business efficiency.
Prioritising data protection and security is a critical step to guarantee that your organisation does not suffer a data breach and compromise the data of your whole consumer base. As Facebook has demonstrated, consumers dislike it when unknown parties access their personal information. Therefore, data safety and security should be a major priority. It is not surprising that the EU's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) affect every business, including those that market and sell to clients inside the EU. Since other countries may follow suit, your company must adhere to all applicable guidelines to ensure the privacy of your customers and leads.
Accidents happen, and in some circumstances, there is little you can do to prevent them. This is why it is crucial to implement a data recovery approach for your business. Losing customer data can be disastrous since it may affect your marketing techniques, campaigns and automation. A data recovery plan or backup can come in handy when somebody accidentally deletes data or your data management software fails. Create a relevant solution for your business and consider regularly exporting your data to cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Drive.
In the spirit of bolstering your data management systems, it is crucial to explore platform-specific strategies as well. If your business uses SharePoint, for example, understanding the best practices for SharePoint document management can greatly enhance your operations. This involves organising files in a structured manner, setting up permissions effectively, versioning your documents, and making use of SharePoint's metadata features. Such steps can help eliminate data duplication, improve security, and ease the recovery process in case of data loss.
You can also save to an external hard drive, although it isn't the safest option. Aside from backing up your data, ensure to have security permissions in case you are locked out. Engaging IT support can be useful for learning the best data security and recovery strategies for your small business.
Your business obtains duplicate data from various sources, including your clients and leads. So put in place protocols to manage data redundancy. For instance, a client may return to make another buy or accept several lead offers or magnets. In such cases, you will require a policy to avoid adding duplicate data to your data management system. While many businesses may not consider this when first establishing their data management systems, it is critical to design systems to allow data modification whenever somebody makes a repeat purchase. This is useful for safeguarding against data duplication and redundancy and keeping a clean data management system.
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