The Five Strategies You Should Be Using to Ensure the Quality of Your Data

By Sridhar Bankuru, VP of Software Development at RightData

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Unless you’ve been hiding in an analog world, you know full-well that data reigns supreme. It's the force steering decisions, molding strategies, and powering innovation. Yet, the key to unleashing the full potential of data lies in its quality.

The recent "2023 Wakefield Research data quality survey", which polled 200 data professionals found that more than half of respondents reported 25% or more of revenue was subjected to data quality issues. The average percentage of impacted revenue jumped to 31%, up from 26% in 2022.

When data quality affects revenue, we need to act fast!

As an executive at RightData, a pioneering player in the data quality sphere, I'm here to discuss fundamental strategies to safeguard the integrity of your data.

1. Establish a Comprehensive Data Governance Framework

To uphold data quality, it's imperative to lay a solid data governance foundation. This involves setting clear policies, standards, and procedures to manage data throughout its lifecycle.

• Data Ownership: Making individuals or teams to oversee data accuracy, privacy, and security helps minimize errors. Data integrity can be achieved with clear delineation of responsibility ensures that each domain maintains its quality standards.
• Data Stewardship: Data stewards are crucial for data quality management, right from metadata maintenance to establishing quality standards is integral to maintaining data consistency and reliability across an organization.
• Data Quality Metrics: Clear and well-defined metrics aligned with business objectives helps in achieving data accuracy, completeness, consistency, reliability, and timeliness goals. These metrics can be used as benchmarks for continuous improvement in data quality.
• Compliance and Security: Legal and regulatory requirements will mandate, maintaining robust data security processes. Governance of sensitive information will ensure trust in the organization's data handling practices.
• Data Quality Awareness: Training and quality awareness programs are required to highlight the importance of data quality for every business. Such initiatives will bring specific business analytics impact and what it takes to correct data quality across the organization.

2. Implement Real-time Data Monitoring and Validation

Real-time monitoring and validation are essential to spot and rectify issues promptly, ensuring data remains reliable for analytics.

• Advanced Data Profiling: RightData’s DataTrust provides insights into data attributes, helping to identify underlying quality issues or inconsistencies. It enables multiple datasets to be profiled (descriptive statistics) with simple drag and drop feature.
• Dashboard and Reporting: The use of customizable dashboards in DataTrust allows for real-time monitoring of key data quality metrics, enhancing transparency and control over data quality.
• Data Quality Monitoring: Automating notifications and defect logs facilitate rapid resolution of data issues, minimizing potential disruptions to data analytics processes.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Collaboration is vital for addressing data quality challenges, promoting intangible benefits like teamwork and shared responsibility in real-time data quality management.
• Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Business Rule recommendations use machine learning models, which in turn aid in adapting to new data anomalies or changes in data quality requirements, ensuring data observability as every system evolves.
• Integration with Business Processes: Prioritize data quality monitoring with key business processes which directly supports business objectives. Ensure data quality initiatives are in tandem with organizational goals.

3. Automate Data Quality Checks

Automation significantly reduces manual effort, making the process more efficient and scalable.

• Quality Checks: Regular data audits and updates ensure ongoing accuracy, consistency, and completeness, maintaining data reliability.
• Alerting and Notifications: Timely alerts on data quality issues from DataTrust enable swift action and remediation, preventing data quality degradation.
• Leveraging Technology: The application of AI and machine learning for automated anomaly detection and domain prediction provides predictive insights into data quality, enhancing proactive quality checks.
• Data Quality Testing Scenarios: Integrated testing of data quality help in identifying gaps in ETL processes, ensuring comprehensive data quality at every stage of data movement.
• Automated ETL Pipelines: DataTrust with DataFactory for automated validation in ETL processes streamlines data quality checks, reducing manual effort and increasing efficiency. Automated testing starting with development environments, ensures data pipelines are reliable and effective. Ongoing production data can leverage and use quality checks on incremental loads.

4. Maintain a Data Catalog and Metadata Management

A well-maintained data catalog and effective metadata management are crucial for understanding and trusting data. RightData’s DataMarket makes it easy for all business users to find and consume data products. It provides an online shopping style experience to data consumers, allowing them to use natural language search to find data products, to see quality ratings and reviews from other users, and to see the details of the data product.

• Metadata Integration: Integrating metadata in DataTrust and DataMarket provides immediate insights into data quality. Passive and active metadata changes will be part of data observability reports in real time. Automating metadata updates ensures system landscapes are in sync, reducing manual errors and improving efficiency.
• Access and Visualization: Advanced visualization with intuitive reports will enhance understanding of data structures, making quality scorecards more accessible and understandable to users and governance teams.
• Advanced Search Capabilities: Enhancing data catalogs with AI-driven search features facilitates intuitive data discovery, streamlining data access and utilization.
• Data Governance Frameworks: Aligning data catalogs with data governance frameworks ensures consistent policy application and management across the organization.
• Customization and Personalization: Providing personalized data catalog experiences caters to varied user roles and preferences, making data management more user-centric.
  

5. Foster a Collaborative Environment for Data Quality Improvement

Building a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement is vital for sustained data quality efforts. RightData’sDataTrust is built to improve data quality, reliability and completeness of the data sets because if you can’t trust your data, what’s the point? It’s everything you need for data observability, data validation, and data reconciliation at massive scale, code-free, and easy to use.

• Data Quality Reporting: DataTrust dashboards are intuitive and provide real-time data quality insights fosters a culture of transparency with audit capabilities.
• Role-based Access and Responsibilities: Clearly defining roles and responsibilities for data quality management ensures accountability and clarity in data handling. Having teams across departments to address complex data quality issues promotes a holistic approach to data quality improvements.
• Data Quality Audits: DataTrust is data quality audit product, review by audit teams or governance teams ensures adherence to high data quality standards.
• Incentivize Data Quality Improvements: Recognizing and rewarding contributions to data quality enhancement motivates stakeholders to maintain high data quality.
• Data Literacy Programs: Investing in programs to improve overall data understanding among employees builds a knowledgeable workforce capable of managing and utilizing data effectively. Utilizing analytics and machine learning to identify data quality patterns and anomalies helps in proactive management and improvement of data quality.
• Scalable Data Quality Tools and Infrastructure: Ensuring the scalability and adaptability of data quality tools and infrastructure, including DataTrust, supports the growing and evolving data needs of the organization.

In today's data-driven world, the quality of data stands as a cornerstone for strategic decision-making and growth. Embracing these vital strategies enables organizations to enhance their data integrity and harness the full potential of their data assets.

As an executive who values the transformative power of data, I am convinced that investing in data quality equates to investing in the future. Prioritizing data quality transcends mere technical requirements; it's a strategic imperative. Leveraging RightData’s DataTrust platform, organizations are empowered to reinforce their data integrity, paving the way for insightful decision-making and enduring growth.

For more information, get a demo of RightData's data quality platform, DataTrust.

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