Posts Tagged data stewardship

The Need to Have Data Management

A string of data forms what is called a field. You can think of a field as a box that holds information such as a customer name, telephone number, or address. These fields are used by the computer for processing. The collection of all these fields makes up what is known as a record. A collection of records makes up a file. And finally, a collection of files is known as a database. Data management is the act of managing all data; from its simplest form to its most complex.

Data management involves separating data files from different applications. These files are then used for other systems and processes such as payroll systems. Sometimes data that are created from different applications result in data redundancy. When this happens it is known as a data integrity issue. The need for managing all these data is important to ensure that the data are consistent and useful. Sometimes handling all this information requires a lot of laborious tasks, like manually entering the data into the computer system.

In order to resolve issues with data management, a database system approach is used to ensure effective management. The database approach allows applications from different locations to access the same database. Updating these files may not affect the whole database systems and ensures that data integrity and consistency is achieved. It also eliminates data redundancy and allows data to be shared as will with other resources within the organization. They used also specialized software to implement successful database approach as part of data management technology. Thus many companies use database management systems. These are usually composed of programs that use database as its interface and other algorithms to manage data.

With effective data management, data is organized for its optimal use by the organization. This affects all the business methods and practices. As a result data content is easily accessible, structured logically and organized physically. In order to show the logical relationship among data, a tool known as data model is used which contains map or diagrams that shows entities and relationships that exists among these data. This is a useful tool to understand what data are the needed in the system.

Although data stewardship may seem simple it requires a lot of management skills.  The effort spent on managing is worth it because data is an integral part of the company’s decision making to ensure that business operations and practices are high quality.

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