There’s much to be celebrated after going live with a new system. Everything is going to run better, all systems are literally a go, and perhaps business processes are going to be a lot more efficient. Don’t fall victim to this sort of honeymoon phase of migration, however. Now that you’re live, it’s time to think about data management and maintenance.
BackOffice Associates discusses the importance of maintaining data quality after going live. While the latter is certainly a positive goal to have, it’s not the end goal. Lack of regular upkeep can lead to inefficiencies that affect overall performance and even downtime.
Databases are used to maintain a library of information in a well-organized, accessible format. Changes are constantly being made as material is added, removed, and moved around. People may also change parameters within the database, decide to use different indexing systems, and so forth. Over time, this can cause the database to start to malfunction. Data maintenance is used to keep the database clean and well organized so that it will not lose functionality, hence why going live is not the be-all-end-all.
As discussed last week, one way to mitigate data problems is performing data assessments. Data assessment, or data quality assessment, helps to uncover technical data that may have inconsistencies, missing values, spelling errors, or simply data in the wrong fields.
The solution? Data strategy.
“A comprehensive and adequately-resourced data governance strategy — enabled and informed by the data migration process — gives organizations a fighting chance to maintain business-ready data in a production system,” writes BackOffice Associates.
So much relies on proper data management, and regardless of system migration, maintenance is key.