Enterprise Data Management: What Is It And How Does It Work?

The quantity and variation of data your business handles is growing at an exponential rate. In order to separate the valuable insights from the noise, organizations need to learn how to manage their data effectively.

So, how can it be done? Let’s first take a look at what enterprise data management (EDM) is and why it’s important for your business.

What is enterprise data management?

Enterprise data management refers to the way in which your organization integrates, governs, segments and transfers data across multiple channels.

Typically, it’s managed by a member of your IT team (for instance, an IT project manager). They oversee the data lineage processes within your organization, ensuring data is categorized and used as it should be.

How does it work?

There are a lot of moving parts within enterprise data management, but the biggest data responsibilities include:

• Data quality. This task involves weeding out bad data, cleansing, creating rule definitions and guaranteeing your data is of a good, useable quality.
• Data governance. It’s important to create standardized policies and procedures to ensure your data is secure and your processes and people are accountable.
• Data integration. Accessibility is important when it comes to data management. Data integration collates your data into one centralized place, in turn improving collaboration, enabling data-driven business decisions and reducing errors.
• Data security and integrity. Data security is a top priority for all businesses. It involves ensuring the protection of data throughout its entire lifecycle.
• Master data management (MDM). This is a process that orchestrates a single, ‘truthful’ view of your data. Oftentimes, data tools are used to help collate records, remove data duplicates and apply pre-defined rules.

Ultimately, EDM works by creating a streamlined, process-driven data culture within your business.

Why is enterprise data management so important?

In short, enterprise data management prioritises the accessibility of your data. It ensures your data is:

• Accessible to everyone in your business
• Of a high quality
• Ready to be analyzed
• Secure, compliant and in line with industry regulations
• Organized in one central place
• Consistent and understandable

With this accessibility, your business and data teams can work towards extracting valuable insights without any miscommunications. In turn, increasing your organization’s competitive advantage and allowing you to prioritize business intelligence.

Make your data manageable

Despite the complexity of enterprise data management, it’s a worthwhile undertaking.

As data prioritizations - such as data governance and analytics – grow, so too does the need for a better overall data management strategy.

Without a consolidated, truthful and governed view of your data, your business will struggle to implement data-driven change. So, make it your goal to create a more manageable data ecosystem.

Read more about CloverDX's approach to enterprise data management