With the increasing popularity of analytics and big data, business owners are becoming aware of the significant role that data management plays for an organization. Credit goes to factors like forecasting customer expectations, product management, availability, improved customer services, and competitor’s analysis, data quality management is a critical function for any organization.

One important condition applicable here is that the data should be complete, accurate, and consistent to help businesses make informed decisions. It won’t be wrong to say that modern businesses cannot afford to ignore data quality management.

What is Data Quality Management?

Data Quality Management refers to the process that brings the right people, technologies, and processes in a combination to achieve a common goal of improving the health of data being circulated in the organization. This process is of immense importance since all the important business decisions depend on high-quality data. However, the process of managing data quality has got easier with the next-generation electronic document management systems.

The ones with seamless integration capability make value addition for an organization’s quality management system, improving the product quality and customer experience.

Need for Data Quality Management

DQM is a very important process to make sense of your business data, which adds value to your bottom line. Here are three reasons that you need to have the DQM process in place:

1. It helps to build the base for all your business initiatives since the outdated data is unreliable. Outdated data can result in more mistakes and rework. A DQM process helps organizations to define a framework for every department to manage and maintain data quality.
2. DQM helps organizations to set up an information base to have a firm hold on the data while cutting down the expenses since poor quality data is one of the key reasons for major mistakes. Having a DQM process in place, you can ensure updated and accurate data flow throughout your organization for a confident approach in decision making.
3. Last but not least, the DQM process helps organizations to meet the risk, quality, and compliance objectives. An organization can establish fine procedures and clear communication with good data on their side. It is more like the implementation of data quality policies at a base level for streamlining all the processes accordingly.

The Cornerstone of High-Quality Data

To ensure an effective data quality management process, every organization need a structural foundation to support its quality management initiatives. The five factors that make a great foundation structure for implementing policies for high-quality data in your data units:

Organizational Role Structure

First and foremost, step in ensuring quality data is establishing the right hierarchy structure within the organization. Make sure you define the important roles such as data steward, business analyst, Change Manager, Program Manager, etc. to ease the data quality management at every level.

Defining the Data Quality

Now that structure is clearly defined, you must define the data quality. If you will not be able to make your employees understand the expectations in terms of data quality management, you won’t be able to make the most out of the critical information you have. However, the definition of data quality may vary from business to business.

Executing Data Audits

Performing audits to keep a check on data quality is as important as auditing the financial data and performance of your organization. When you conduct regular data quality audits, you can ensure that the required data is circulated across the organization in the exact format defined under data quality objectives.

Reporting and Monitoring Data

A well-defined process of reporting and monitoring data is also of great significance in ensuring data quality. You can have an electronic document management system in place to keep all the significant data recorded and documented for regular monitoring and reporting activities that improve overall decision-making.

Mitigating Data Errors

Once you will have a document management system in place, you can keep a check on recorded information to mitigate the data errors. This ensures a process of continuous improvement for the data quality meant for internal as well as external communication.

Best Practices for Managing Data Quality

If you want to implement a data quality management process, given below is the list of best practices you can follow:

Current Data Review

Don’t let the bad data and insights make your decision-making process ill. The old phrase “Garbage In Garbage Out” fits perfectly well in this context. You must regularly review your data to identify the errors, redundancies, and inconsistencies and ensure only quality data flow in the organization.

Restrict Bad Data (with Firewalls)

You must have a firewall in all the systems within the organization to keep them clear of bad data and errors. A firewall is the best solution to stay error-free even when you have a large group of people to access data. It is, in fact, an imperative system to have especially in the organizations with multiple access points

Integrate DQM with Business Intelligence

In modern-day business, the integration-enabled systems are gaining tractions. The systems working together are a source of great outcomes. Integrating the process of data quality management with business intelligence triggers automation, which accelerates the process lifecycles.

Define Organizational Structure

As already discussed, it is very important to have the right people in the right place. You can ensure that through creating a hierarchical structure of roles and the respective responsibilities. This will further help you to ensure that all the standards defined in the organization are met without any inconsistency.

Set Up a Data Governance Board

You must establish a data governance board within the organization to keep a check on the implementation of data quality policies and standards. It also includes defining an objective measurement process or scale that can improve the quality. When you will be able to measure it, you will be able to improve it.

Document Management Solution for Data Quality Management

An electronic document management solution is a perfect way to ensure that your employees follow best practices for data quality management. From documenting business-critical information till publishing or archiving it, everything can be managed through an advanced document management software like Qualityze.

There are many benefits that you can expect after having an EDMS in place. Some of them are:

1. Easy Retrieval: A DMS makes it easy for you to retrieve the critical documents than manual systems. For example – if you are working in a medical devices industry, a document management system makes it easy for you to retrieve records that too in comparatively lesser time.
2. Version Control: Many of the document management software enables the organization to control the revision of the critical documents and manage them effectively with the version control capability. It ensures that only latest version of the document is referred at the time of need.
3. Improved Workflows: With a document management system in place, you can have a clear communication across the organization especially with a cloud-based EDMS that offers a centralized platform to share, modify, and store all the important documents without any hassle.
4. Regulatory Compliance: A document management system not only keeps your critical information within reach; it also helps you to meet compliance standards by allowing you to validate and verify the documents with electronic signatures and automated email approvals.
5. Secure Access: A web-based document management system always need credentials to log in to the system and access the documents. Nowadays, you can also leverage role-based access in the DMS to ensure that only authorized persons are reviewing. Modifying, or publishing the documents.
6. Cost-Effectiveness: An electronic document management system is way more cost-effective than manual document management. You can adopt a paperless approach that makes your organization a contributor to environmental sustainability. Wouldn’t you like to opt for a cost-effective option to manage documents?
7. Increased Competitiveness: When you will follow best practices for the management of critical documents, you will have improved processes and product quality. This will improve your organization’s effectiveness and competitiveness in the marketplace as well.

Isn’t document management system a smart way to manage data quality for your business processes? So, make sure you take a step forward to new data quality management initiatives with the best document management software.

The Bottom Line

Maintaining data quality is vital for making your business processes more efficient for improved outcomes and confidence that help to make informed decisions. It can be done with the help of the right document management system like Qualityze in place that fits well for your ever-growing and changing business needs.

Are you ready to manage your data quality?

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What is Change Management?

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Let’s start with the fundamentals by going through the definition of the term “Electronic Signatures” and how is it different from the term digital signatures, which people often find confusing.
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This post will help you understand each of them in detail. Let’s quickly start with their definitions:

Quality Assurance

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