Why Organizations Need a Data Audit and How to Conduct It
Introduction In any given organization, the most effective way of identifying problems in your data storage, marketing, and your overall business operations is through a data audit. How is this achievable? In simple terms, when you look hard at your data assets, you can tactically increase your proceeds. How are the data assets and the proceeds related? Check this out; with a data audit, it is easy to see the areas where data may be incomplete or hindered and, subsequently, money is wasted due to the lack of, or correcting this information. This article will share why data auditing is important and provide a strategic 5step approach to conducting an in-house data audit.
Find Out What You Have It is essential to understand that, without the understanding or knowing your data, it's difficult to have a complete data audit. The reasoning behind this notion is that you may have data silos where assets are stored in different places like servers, programs, apps and software.
For one to know what they have, one can come up with a list with all of their different types of data assets. The list can include:
POS purchase info
CRM software customer info
Email marketing contacts
Social media followers and fans
Online shopping cart info
Server with customer data in Excel
Cont‌ Isolating the Data Finding out where the data is and how to access it is what comes next. For instance, even if everyone in the organization uses the same CRM software to feed the customers information into the system, some data will still be mishandled and must be accounted for. A thorough look at all your data imports must be completed to account for any missing data.
Interview the Main Players The aim of interviewing the key players or stakeholders is to get a clear picture of all the data your company leverages. For the case of a large organization, seeing that it's almost impossible to interview all the employees, these data can be obtained from the head of departments and leaders of all departments, but namely the data-heavy ones, like accounting/finance, HR, etc. Here you can understand what data they have, how they use it, what problems they are facing with it, and where its located.
Cont‌ Prioritizing and Organizing
Once the data is identified, it should then be organized based on its value to the organization. Here you can determine the information that is of most importance to the company and prioritize it. How you choose to prioritize it is based on your industry needs, however sales and financial information, along with employee data should always be on your list of essentials. Track How the Data is Used These are the final and most crucial step; identifying how the company uses the data in its daily operations. By tracking the data, you can discover gaps in the data usage which can help in potentially making use of valuable unused data.
Why Data Auditing is Important? Human Error As much as it is said that business is run by technology at the end of the day business users are human. These means that there is a chance of errors as data is inputted. These errors affect everything from customer service to data quality and efficiency. Compliance Due to expansions in regulatory legislation in recent years, even IT assets like data are regulated. Therefore data auditing is essential to comply with these bodies like HIPPA, PCI, and SOX.
Customer service A data auditing report helps a company understand faults in the initial system and can make the necessary changes. Additionally, from a data audit, you can address any rising issues. In turn, this means better and faster customer service.
Integrated Software Solutions and Providers As detailed above, data auditing can be tricky and time consuming based on how automated and organized your company currently is. To assist with this, many companies are turning to data auditing software to assist in the regular data audits and maintain industry compliance. One of the best ways to approach this to work with custom software developer who can not only build or modify a data auditing application to meet your industry and business-specific needs, but also integrate the your current software suite to prevent the aforementioned formation of data silos and allow your business to rapidly audit and leverage data. Companies, like Chetu, are an ideal partner for this, as they have ample experience in data auditing applications, but also, in Chetu’s case industryspecific expertise in over 40 verticals. To showcase this, “REALTORS Association of Edmonton partners with Chetu� is a current article on their site detailing the data auditing and infraction tracking application that they just built for the real estate industry. Chetu can help build the ideal data auditing solution for your company, which will lead to a much more efficient and prosperous organization.
Our Detail Chetu Inc Address: 1248 N. University Dr. Suite 300, Plantation, FL 33322 Voice : (954) 342-5676, Fax : (305) 832-5987 Email : sales@chetu.com Website : https://www.chetu.com/