The hardest part of any project is getting started. This is true of managing your company’s data as well. Every department has their “private collection”, and even many employees keep important knowledge locked in their smart phones, or even worse, only in their heads.
Making your company’s data profitable needs to start with some building blocks. Some of these will require trust, as staff and departments may not want to “give up” the valuable information they’ve collected. What does this process look like?
- Formal and informal reviews of data as well as key people to determine what is being tracked.
- Determine areas of duplication and create a plan to consolidate this information into a unified whole. This may be a substantial project.
- Establish or formalize rules of “ownership” of specific data and structure its storage accordingly. **DON’T FORGET BACKUPS!**
- Once you know what you know, begin the process of filling in the “holes” where key information is NOT being collected.
There are many sub-steps and whole processes involved in this short list, and you may want to consider bringing in outside expertise to assist in the process, both from a technical as well as a political perspective.