4 Keys To Managing Your Data More Effectively

In the struggle to find an effective data management solution, you are not alone. So stop beating yourself up and breathe a sigh of relief. Many organizations are trying to get a handle on their data to reap the many benefits of an effective program. These include streamlining operations, forecasting future activities, enhancing their value proposition, and increasing new business generated.

When it comes to structuring an effective data management program, many factors are in play. To find a solution that’s right for your franchise, it’s important to have a firm understanding of the barriers you must overcome. Let’s look at four common barriers we have consistently come across and offer some practical ideas for addressing them.

1. Poor data collection because of low user participation

Time is of the essence, so asking the right questions is a critical step to ensure a successful program. Ask your stakeholders to invest their time to provide only the most essential data points and eliminate any “nice to haves.” Long forms and questionnaires often dissuade stakeholder participation because they won’t know the answers to many of the questions or may have provided the information already through another system. Because their time is valuable, they’ll make the decision that their time is better spent elsewhere. Avoid stakeholder fatigue by auditing systems to identify what data points can be sourced from existing platforms to avoid the common problem of stakeholders providing redundant information across various systems and teams. This keeps stakeholders focused on providing only the most critical and relevant data points and increases the likelihood of their participation by streamlining data collection efforts.

2. Data inconsistency and inability to retrieve meaningful results

Once you’ve decided what data points to collect, it’s critical to build structure around the data. Without structure you set the table for inconsistent and unusable data. Make decisions up front so those contributing don’t have to. Should the response be formatted as numbers or text? Do you want contributors to select from a clean, pre-defined list or have the freedom to enter their own list items? Are you looking for a yes/no response or a paragraph? Take great consideration in how to best structure your data, as it helps to ensure that you collect clean data. In the end, this will increase the usability of the database when sorting, searching, and filtering the data you’ve collected.

3. Inability to track and store preferences and attachments in a central location

Just as it’s important to make the best use of the time invested by internal stakeholders, it’s even more critical to be sensitive to the time invested by clients and other external stakeholders. Evaluate the importance of tracking key elements that are often requested but not easily or consistently retrievable. Items organizations may consider tracking and storing for external client stakeholders include permissions/approvals, engagement letters, and logos. A few examples for internal stakeholders may include a partner’s alternative biography summary, proposal or presentation formats, and internal communication preferences. Proactively tracking these items and storing them in a central location allows for quick and easy retrieval across teams. It also eliminates the dreaded task of having to go back to internal or external stakeholders to ask them to provide information again because you can’t seem to locate it.

4. Time-consuming process of transferring data to presentations and proposals

There it is again: the time factor. Most organizations struggle with connecting their data points to their customer-facing content, such as tombstones, biographies, or practice overviews. Usually teams are requested to provided complete proposals on short turnaround times, so integrating your data with your design preferences is ideal, especially for lean organizations. Platforms that generate results within seconds would provide the greatest value as this eliminates the hours it may take to copy, paste, format, and organize data that must be transferred across multiple systems and design tools.

Conclusion

Overcoming these common barriers can set organizations on the right path toward an effective data collection and management program. The right technology platform can lead to data that can be leveraged strategically to run your teams more proficiently, and help your organization be first to market to showcase your experience and business opportunities.

 Jamie Addison is the Customer Success Manager at Pitchly, a cloud-based content services developer for organizations to organize and activate their intellectual property. She can be reached at Jamie.addison@pitchly.net.