Big data has changed the way that the business world operates. Entrepreneurs are now making data-driven decisions that are much more accurate than using intuition. There are many business benefits that are derived from big data. Data analytics allows companies to create products and services that people want. It also helps to boost the efficiency of business processes.

With that in mind, we’re going to look at some data management tools that will make your life much easier. It’s not enough that you simply know that data is powerful. You have to incorporate its use into your business.

Learn to Discern Quality Data

The sheer amount of data available is so vast that it can be overwhelming. So the first management tool is to learn how to pull only data that is important to your business. That’s the only way that you’ll ever make good use out of it. Quality data has five distinct metrics:

• Availability
• Usability
• Reliability
• Relevance
• Readability

Data Storage

You need the capacity to store large amounts of data. If you are looking to ease your most challenging business processes, then you should start by scaling your data storage capabilities. Furthermore, create several methods of backing up all of this data.

Cleansing

Data is brought to you through numerous sources. Some of this data might already be structured but you’ll find that most of it come to you unstructured. So, you will need some way to clean up this raw data so that it’s useful. Data cleansing tools allow you to create specific filters that can be used to sort through data, only allowing useful information through.

Data Profiling

In order to successfully manage data, you will need it to be visible across your entire network. This is done through data profiling. Profiling is an analytics tool that captures metadata, provides insights into whether the data is useful, and identifies potential issues. Of course, you set the parameters based on your business. Think of data profiling as an inventory for tracking data. It gives you easy access to specific information that helps you find exactly what you need.

Discovery

A sound data management strategy must include a method of discovery. That’s where data mining tools come into play. The best bet here is going to be outsourcing. It’s the cheapest and most efficient method of data discovery available. Data mining is the process of pulling relevant information from raw data in order to make important decisions.

Data Mapping

Entrepreneurs must understand the flow of data if they want to create efficient data management systems. Data mapping tools will help you identify potential insecurities for your data. Think of it as a blueprint. You can actually see a representation of how raw data is transformed into information. Seeing certain relationships between data sets can really help you optimize the entire process, making your life much easier.

Data Analysis

This tool is the heart and soul of data management. The analysis is the process that allows a business to identify patterns in data, measure the patterns within that data, and then create an action plan from that data. The analysis is a combination of every tool mentioned in this post thus far.

Visualization

Visualization is the final step in data management. It is the bridge between data analysis and actionable insights. In other words, it’s the medium in which you communicate the insights found during the data analysis phase. For example, your business creates a spreadsheet that displays all findings from a specific data set. In this form, it’s just a bunch of numbers that make sense to you but are just going to confuse investors. So, you create a few graphs to illustrate that data in a way that investors can see with their own eyes. This would be a form of data visualization.