Nibletz Staff
Data doesn’t mean just one thing for one business. It encompasses just about all the different ways you can use digital storage to improve how your business does things. Data can help you transform a business into a more efficient machine. It can help you communicate and share important resources across a whole network. It can even offer you the privacy you need to conduct some of your most important business. Here is how you start using data to really add to your business.
How you handle it
Most businesses use IT in some manner. It’s all too easy to think that you can improvise an approach as you go. However, then you start finding yourself piling up on documents and resources that you soon lose control of. For a proper approach to your data, you need to start organizing it as soon as you can. Conduct an audit to find what you need and where it belongs. It’s just as important to find what you don’t need and get rid of it. Make sure that the staff has consistent guidelines on what kind of resource or report belongs where. That way you don’t have to spend half-an-hour looking for that one document down the line.
Using it in your day-to-day
Capture more data of how your business operates. Then you give yourself more opportunity to use it on a daily basis, improving those operations. For example, you might wish to set up an Excel sheet for each employee. Use this sheet and a set of pre-determined KPIs. Then you can set up a culture where employees conduct objective measurements of their productivity. This helps you get together with them to evaluate their workflow and what improvements can be made. By getting the employees to take part in the process themselves, you don’t have to take on the morale damaging action of spying on them. Instead, it’s a democratic process that helps them get involved in their own growth.
Maintaining better relationships
Data can also help you maintain the other group of people that’s of vital importance to the business. We are talking, of course, about your customers. Remembering your customers and their preferences and interests are crucial. Nowadays, you don’t have to rely on the memory of your staff which is all too full of human error. Instead, you can make use of customer relationship management tools. This can help you keep records of every single person who makes use of your business or even contacts you. Records and be updated and shared across a whole network. That way, when a customer returns to do business, you can pull up their file and learn everything you need to know about them.
Sharing assets instantly
That sharing of records is a quality that should be reflected in all the data through your business. But how you do it depends on your needs. There are two options that most businesses will consider. One is the installation of physical data centers in the business. The other is the use of Cloud computing software. Data centers allow the business a lot more control on how they handle their data. It also adds a level of physical security to make sure that unauthorized access isn’t allowed. However, Cloud systems take up a lot less space. It acts as a remote backup for any data, too. Most important for a lot of people, you can scale it up alongside your business. This is in opposition to data centers, which can’t change storage size once they’re installed.
When privacy is everything
Sometimes, the sharing of data needs to go outside those running and operating in the business. A lof of the most important of business processes are done remotely, now. Things like mergers, joint ventures and board communications. But this means there’s a lot of room for unauthorized access to important conversations and drafts of documents. Which is why it’s important you rely on services where privacy is crucial. Digital data rooms like SecureDocs, for instance. Data rooms allow for the complete privacy and control of documents accessible by only those few who are authorized to see them. It also helps everyone with access see every single click and edit to the data inside, creating a much more accountable environment.
Securing your data
Security, as you may image, is important to data. Not just to the kind of hyper-sensitive data mentioned above. Your business relies on it and the wrong hands getting access can lead to a lot of trouble. It can lead to your business methods being made public and financial details stolen. Regarding customer data, having it taken can even land you in some serious legal hot water. So you need to take multiple approaches to securing your data. Teach your staff about password security and logging out when leaving devices alone. Use things like antiviruses and firewalls to eliminate threats. Use encryption on your data as well as your network access points.
Ensuring continuity
The threat of the external wrongdoer isn’t the only one threatening your data. Nowadays, businesses are so reliant on their IT that losing it for an hour can be a catastrophic emergency. Which means you need to make sure that it doesn’t happen. First, using a diversity of internet connections and a power generator can help back up your access to that data. Then you should ensure that you have backups of the data as well. Cloud storage and more than one physical storage should be enough to make sure that you never lose data for good. Continuity is an important part of being a reliable business. If you can’t extend it to your IT and your data, then you’re at risk of losing it at any time.
The more you use data correctly, the more efficient and productive a business you can have. It helps you protect and improve those processes that help you make money and grow. We hope the points above give you just a few ideas of how a proper approach to data can benefit you.
