6 Steps of Proper Handling of Data Management for Business Growth

How do you make business-related decisions? Do you follow your gut-feeling or rely on intuition? Or, perhaps you want to do exhaustive research before jumping in on conclusions? When it comes to growing and developing your business, all your decisions must be made based on the data you receive from the buyers, potential buyers, the target audience and, generally, the market. This imposes an important consideration: data management. How well do you handle data?

The truth is, with today’s advanced technology and digitalization of every process in the organization, data management is much easier to handle. This is due to the fact that there are numerous data management platforms and systems that perform that tedious task automatically. All you need to do is integrate such a system in your organization and have a skilled team member who will observe the processes. To help you out, here are the steps of how to manage data in order to grow your business even more. 

Step 1: Learn About Data Management

Data management is handling data by collecting, analyzing and keeping it efficiently and cost-effectively. It is a process that helps people and businesses to optimize data use and make law-regulated decisions that will increase their revenues. The process is a broad one, and it includes a lot of tasks, policies and practices, but using a data management platform can cover all the segments. 

Step 2: Recognize the Data Management Challenges in Your Organization

Problems with handling data arise from the increasing amount of data that comes in. Data can be versatile, fast and covers different segments of the business so the managers will eventually find it hard to make decisions for future business prospects because they won’t be able to process all the data on their own. Hence, several challenges arise:

• No information on what kind of data is being collected 
• Maintenance levels plummet as the data expands
• Compliance requirements are overlooked as they change constantly
• No information about how to recycle data
• It is hard to keep up with changes in data storage. 

Step 3: Research Data Management Platforms

It is clear that the data needs are too big for one person to handle. Therefore, a data management platform must be chosen. These platforms have data management systems built on them offering databases, data lakes and warehouses as well as data analytics and many other features that help with data handling. There are many platforms to choose from, and each one of them has a unique feature that focuses on an important goal. 

Step 4: Choose a Data Management Platform

To choose the right one for your business needs, you need to follow several tips:

• Choose a platform that offers local support – it is imperative to do so as it will be a long process. Hence, you need to find a platform with the support that you will enjoy working and learning about the integration of the system in your organization.
• Choose a platform that collects data from different sources – online, offline, CRM, mobile, etc. as you want all marketing channels to be covered, not only your primary one. 
• Choose a platform that helps you get to your target audience – by giving you the opportunity to select the target demographics, their intent, interest and actions. 
• Choose a platform that retargets quickly – based on the specific behaviour by the target audience; the platform should be able to build retargeting campaigns quickly
• Choose a flexible platform – how can it influence the product’s roadmap.

Step 5: Find the Right Data Management Platform for You

The next step after researching the data platforms is to make a list of the unique features that these platforms offer and along with the pros and cons and decide which of them mostly suits your data needs. To help you, here are the unique features and pros and cons of the top 3 platforms currently on the market.

–       Marketo 

Marketo is a data management system under the hat of Adobe. It is recognized as the leading CRM system that handles data in 2019 and 2020 by Gartner. It offers customization, versatility, multichannel integration and leads nurturing. When it comes to the cons, it is good to notice that the Marketo platform is not easy to use. You would need a licenced expert to show you the benefits of this platform. Fortunately, Adobe users have shown great appreciation about the local customer support and partners that work with Marketo. 

The uniqueness of the platform is that you can build Marketo as you want and pay for those features alone, which makes it an extra flexible platform. 

–       Oracle

These platforms are praised for its security and compliance levers without the need for much configuration. It also works great on-prem and cloud deployments. Another plus is that it is good at scaling to large datasets and performance numbers. However, pricing seems to be high, and the SQL tuning should be better integrated and automated. 

The unique feature it has is parallel execution to apply multiple CPU and I/O resources to the execution of a single database operation. 

–       Salesforce

This data management platform is chosen for its ability to deal with data integrity. Also, it has a simple user experience that users love. Automation and customization are features that are also part of the offer. On the downside, mapping and visualization of data are not done well as the tools are slow or overwhelmed. Also, you can’t design personalized email marketing campaigns as salesforce is limited to user-generated content. 

The unique feature it has is its extremely user-friendly interface which is very easy to learn and navigate. 

Step 6: Consult a Licenced Expert for the Platform

No matter how easy you think it might be, always consult a licensed expert about the integration of the data management plan in your organization as it is crucial to start using it the right way – from a correct setup to correct implementation and use. 

To Sum Up

In order to let your business grow and develop, you must handle your data properly. For that purpose, it is wise to use a data management system and platform that most suit your business needs. Also, you need to consult an expert who will ease your way in the process and the complete integration and implementation of the platform. 

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 JTF Marketing training that raised her interest in the marketing automation industry.