Is your data managed?

Data is one of the core building blocks for any ERP or that of a matter any  IT solution what is supporting the day to day business and operations of a company. It is needed to run the business, run HR, do reporting, do analysis, do forecasting etc.

Data is also the baseline what needs to be defined when implementing a new solution and in well managed implementation programs there is usually a lot of effort put into the data definitions, cleansing and conversions. This is naturally done so that when the system goes live the data is in good quality and everything runs smoothly.

But what about after the implementation? Is it ensured that the data quality continues to be good also when moving from the implementation environment to the day to day business environment?

Surprisingly often during the solution implementation data setup is done to ensure the  go-live but no real effort is put into considering the actual life cycle of the data and the governance aspect. Data management is done in a wild west style ending up with duplicate master data, missing transactional data and not needed redundant data.

To actually manage the data it is not just enough to have it in the system. To keep the quality an actual management concept with processes and responsibilities is needed. During an implementation project this might seem like extra resourcing and additional costs, but on a long term might actually provide wanted savings. As an example, if you product data is not maintained correctly and in good quality and the maintenance history is not in good shape it is impossible to run predictive maintenance planning on top. So when after some time implementing a possible predictive maintenance solution you might actually need first a data cleansing project and that if anything tends to be challenging to say the least.

you should not worry about what is needed to manage the data but instead worry what will be the cost if the data is unmanaged.

So when considering what is the effort needed for data management and how much should be invested in it I would say put maximum effort and invest what is needed. In the end you should not worry about what is needed to manage the data but instead worry what will be the cost if the data is unmanaged.