If you are like most business leaders, you know your key customers, critical deadlines related to their orders, and the processes used to meet those deadlines. You also know your employees well, aware of their strengths and weaknesses. However, do you know your businesses data as well as you know your customers and employees?
If your company had to comply with the new EU GDPR regulations, you probably had to conduct a data inventory, but that review may have only been focused on identifying personally identifiable information (PII) and may have missed the opportunity to find and categorize the data that you should be reviewing on a regular basis.
Likewise, if you use an ERP to help manage customer orders, processes, inventory and other aspects of your organization, a data inventory could help you go below the surface and bring valuable insights about your business and customers that could yield financial rewards.
Getting Started on a Data Inventory
At the most basic level you should know what types of information you are storing and where they are stored. A list of systems and the types of content each system contains is the first step of building a data inventory and an easy one to conduct internally.
Taking the inventory to the next level requires identifying the data points stored in each system, the purpose of each data point, and who in the organization can add, update or delete the record (owners).
The Value of a Data Inventory
The value for taking the time to conduct the first two steps comes in the final step, identifying how each data point is used or could be used. For example, a review of customer data may find that there is a treasure trove of sales history that could be used to assess the health of a relationship and avert the loss of a key customer.
A data review at this level can be slow and tedious, but the impact on your business could be huge. Many companies bring in outside experts at this stage to speed the process and insure positive outcomes. In fact, Triple Helix has helped many companies save hundreds of man hours and generate positive ROI by eliminating manual processes or creating more efficient processes. The key is finding the information that can have the biggest impact on the business and be able to bring it to the attention of the right people at the right time.
Need help building a data inventory and deciding what insights should be delivered to the right people at the right time? Triple Helix has a proven track record of helping manufacturers and other companies organize and improve access and use of their critical data. Contact us for a no-obligation consultation to see how we could help you.
