Quality represents the positive aspect of anything. In terms of data, it refers to the accuracy, consistency, completeness, and relevancy resonating the goal.
However, it’s challenging to name any specific example.
Multiple examples of data breach surface the headlines in every few days.
Recalling the incident of Cambridge Analytics in 2018, it was charged for
harvesting data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. Nor did
it take consent before using it for political advertising. It proved a big
scandal that levied fine on Facebook.
The incidents like this created urgent need for managing
data and its quality. That’s why almost every company tries to meticulously
handle the quality of data in the present scenario. This post will help you to
discover some simple ways to integrate quality in data so that sensitive
records can be handled with care.
Data Quality Platform
The very first is data quality platform, which can be a
software solution that is developed to handle, maintain, and enhance the
quality of stored data. These platforms have multiple in-built tools and
functionalities that can identify, audit, refine, track, and validate the stored
records with laser-fast speed.
These software (like Microsoft Azure, Amazon
Web Services or AWS, Talend, etc.)
automate multiple sub-processes that are included in the data handling process.
This is how many organizations become able to minimize errors, streamline
work-cycles, and manage records effectively.
Overall, the software is standalone solutions that can
manage multiple tasks like data integration, segmentation, verification,
standardization, etc. so that accurate and realistic business intelligence can
be drawn. That properly managed data may have structured and unstructured data
entries. With these platforms, organizations can employ servers or cloud to
handle it. Certainly, it would depend on organizational needs, budget, and
preferences.
Benefits a Data Quality Platform Brings
Well, the reasons to require such platforms are many. The first and
foremost is the accuracy of records that strategists can trust and rely for
making strategies. Moreover, there are many more reasons, which are compelling:
- Better decision-making
People
make decisions every day, but only a few prove a milestone and realistically
working. If the data is clean, it represents high quality, which is the main
ingredient of making better and realistic decisions to improve productivity,
performance, and efficiency. Employing any quality platform for data can prove
great help for decision-makers who can use clean data, while becoming fearless
in making decisions. It simply because the risk of disastrous mistakes and
missed opportunities would be minimal.
- Increased efficiency
The
second reason is improved efficiency. It is obvious that manual efforts won’t
match the efficiency of automated tools. Put simply, software has the capacity
to stringently follow quality protocols (which are fed in the form of
functionalities). On the flip side, a data cleansing executive may make
mistakes in verifying entries, removing types, etc. Overall, the software has
cutting edge in managing data quality during data profiling, cleansing,
monitoring, and validation. It takes minimal time and effort to fix mistakes
and inconsistencies, no matter how massive the database is. This is how data
engineers, analysts, and scientists receive proper support from software in
handling errors, and they focus on value-additions and innovation.
- Improved compliance
The next thing is regulatory compliance. It is a significant concern for many businesses and industries that have a pool of sensitive datasets like healthcare, telecommunications, and finance. The software like AWS and Talend can effortlessly introduce accuracy, consistency, and security. These are some strong pillars of compliance, which offload the burden of non-compliance and associated penalties.
· Enhanced customer experience
Customer experience comes first for every organization or entity. Interestingly, the data-driven digital world provides multiple applications or software that can help in drawing customers’ data. This data consists of customers’ preferences, needs, intent, and behaviour. Its analysis can guide on what customers expect and how to make them happy by living up to their expectations. This is how customers can be satisfied and loyalty can be nurtured.
·
Increased
revenue
Revenue
is the return on investment, which is something that every business works for.
The error-free data can help you get insights into their needs, expectations,
realities, gaps, trends, etc. Its analysis will guide to pass through hurdles
and discover potential opportunities for overwhelming revenues. These platforms
can help in automating the cleansing process to increase the likelihood of
possibilities.
Key
Features of Data Quality Platforms
Data profiling
Data profiling can be considered the technical process of
discovering the structure, content, relationship, and quality of datasets so
that effective decisions can be made. The quality management software comes
with robust data profiling capabilities. These capacities allow users to tap
and filter them on the basis of identified patterns and anomalies. This is how
the quality is audited. These tools can be user-friendly and valuable, which
enable you to get into insights without wasting many precious hours.
Data cleansing
Typically, data cleansing is also called data cleaning and
scrubbing. This process helps in exfoliating data by identifying and fixing
errors, inconsistencies, and other flaws. The cleansing tools have incredible
features working the backend for validation, standardization, deduplication and
enrichment. The data
cleansing services providers utilize these features to define the
flexibility to customize solutions, which create scope to integrate desirable
rules and criteria. Also, the user becomes able to automate cleansing process
and ensure quality over time.
Data monitoring and validation
Data monitoring and validation are essential to verify the
seamlessness of data. The cleansing software also come with monitoring
features, which measure the quality metrics and indicators. They facilitate
user to automatically get informed about potential risks and requirements.
Also, the predefined rules and criteria can be modified for customised
validation. These settings enable orgnizations define their own protocols to
measure quality, route alerts, and integrate validation rules as per
requirements.
Error detection and root cause analysis
Error detection is a proactive feature that helps in identifying the
root causes swiftly and eliminating errors. A cleansing software should have
such features that can detect them and highlight the sources of those
inaccuracies. This potential of determining root causes enable users to
investigate and understand what the problem is and how to resolve them. If it
is not resolved, it should be able to avoid its recurrences in the future.
Integration with data sources
This is crucial because the tool without data can never
work. The cleansing tools have integrated features that allow easy and on-going
handling of data and systems after integration. After integration, the
organizations find it easy to handle data and ensure quality of broader data
management throughout the data cycle. This cannot become achievable unless you
have pre-built connectors, APIs, and other features that let in data from
various systems and manage effectively.