A Comprehensive Guide to Data Organization

Have you been racking your brain trying to figure out how data organization would work for your business? Read on to discover how you can get started!

What is Data Organization? 

As a company in the modern world, data organization is something you cannot afford to overlook. Data-informed decision-making has quickly become the way of the future, so naturally, you want your data to be organized and managed well. 

Also Read: Migrate Data Between Cloud Servers

Data organization is the process of filtering your data through a series of procedures, architecture, and policies that allow your business to keep its data secure, consistent, accurate, and quickly accessible. 

How Do You Accomplish Data Organization? 

It is no secret that data organization within a company is an incredibly involved process that requires a multitude of different practices. Without any one of the following practices, your entire data organization system will be flawed, if not completely compromised. 

Data Governance

It all starts with data governance. This is the planning of everything that your data organization will entail. During data governance, you will include elements like the security of data, data quality, availability, consistency, and usability. 

Data Security 

Data security is crucial. This ensures that your company’s data, including your customers’ personal data, is safe and secure. Only authorized people should have access to much of your data, and you want to keep it that way. 

Metadata

Data that references other data can be crucial. During your data organization process, you will want to organize, collect, create, and manage all of the metadata that your business produces. 

Data Architecture

Data architecture is everything. This is the structure in which your data will flow. Getting this aspect correct will make everything much easier as your company grows. 

Data Quality

This is the daily process of maintaining company-wide data quality by filtering out poor quality data. Thus, ensuring that your data is accurate and trustworthy no matter what. 

Documents and Content

Your company most-likely deals with loads of structured and unstructured data. This practice handles your unstructured data in a way that makes it easily accessible and transferable throughout your databases. 

Data Design and Modeling 

This is the design, construction, testing, and maintenance of the data analytics system that your departments will use every day.

Data Warehousing 

This is the set of your primary data warehouse that will allow your data analytics system to operate accordingly. This is what your data organization ultimately revolves around.

Data Integration

This is how your data becomes organized. You will have a specific format that all data will be transformed to so that it will all be uniform and easily accessible. 

Reference Data and Master Data

This is the process of standardizing data values so that your data can be managed in a way that eliminates mistakes and duplications. In other words, it helps further organize your data by cutting down unnecessary clutter while simultaneously eliminating data mistakes. 

Data Storage and Operations 

You can’t forget about the physical part of the data organization process. You will need appropriate hardware and physical infrastructure for all of the above practices to appropriately work. When planning this portion out, be sure to plan for growth. 

Can These Practices Work for Big Data?

The short answer is yes, absolutely. In fact, a big data model could not stand without this type of organizational infrastructure. Imagine having cluttered data that takes you forever to sift through. Now imagine your company dramatically grows over the course of a year. That data will become a tangled mess that may be near impossible to untangle.

Having an organized process like mentioned above will allow you to stay organized as you grow. 

Who Can Effectively Organize Data? 

There is no secret that you will need professionals to build, operate, and maintain this kind of system. Here is a list of personal skill sets that you should look for when hiring someone for these kinds of jobs.

• Database programming 
• Certifications in data management 
• Personal relation skills 
• An understanding of machine learning and AI technologies 
• Knowledge of cloud computing  
• Computer science skills 

How Do You Get the Software?

The best way to begin setting up this type of organizational system is by setting up software that flawlessly integrates with your company. The two main ways you can do this are by building one in-house or outsourcing to a third party.

Build It In-House

Building software for something like this requires a lot of manpower and time. So, this is really only an option for massive companies with virtually unlimited resources. 

Outsource

Most companies, even larger ones, opt to outsource this kind of resource. Third-party companies that specialize in data warehousing and integration take the financial and employee burden off of you. So that your data analysts and software engineers can be free to carry on with their daily tasks. 

The Takeaway

Data organization can be a daunting category of business if you have never looked into it before. However, once you take those first steps, you may realize that it is not all that intimidating. Simply outsource all of the grunt work to professionals and enjoy consistent and accessible data.

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