If you’re planning on introducing enterprise data management into your organization, the best place to start is to form a good strategy. Enterprise data management refers to an organization’s ability to effectively enable its employees to create, integrate, retrieve, deliver and manage data for internal and external applications while maintaining data integrity, and the structure it has created to do so. As enterprise data management involves multiple functions, planning is an important first step to creating and implementing your enterprise data management strategy.
Planning ahead on whether or not you’ll need any additional staff or if you will be required to invest in more (or new) technology is crucial before taking the next step.
Outline your goals
While the main goal of an enterprise data management plan is to empower employees to manage, store and source data within an organization, every organization will have different goals as they prepare to compose an enterprise data management (EDM) plan that improves their current processes. You can define what your organization’s goals are by looking at the systems you already have in place. Do you have a way to securely share data across your organization? Outside of your organization? Do you have the ability to recover previous file versions from any point in time? Can you recover and restore lost data from a reliable backup application? Do you have a data loss prevention plan? Reviewing your organization’s data storage, backup and sharing structure can give you clues about where you organization has weaknesses and which areas should take the prime focus.
Look for simple fixes first
Once you have clear cut goals for what your EDM is responsible for resolving, see how you can tackle the lowest hanging fruit. If you need an easier way to share files within your organization, a network attached storage device can help. Or, if you need a way to protect your data from loss and deletion, you may be able to solve this quickly and easily by investing in a reliable cloud backup solution that fits with your business’s storage levels and data recovery needs. These are quick and easy fixes that will easily fit in with the rest of your EDM plan and solving them first will put you a step ahead in reaching your goals.
Build a strategy for the rest
Some of your goals may require more strategizing, with the help of your IT department or other technology decision makers within your organization. With their help, you can build out a strategy that will address each of your EDM goals and assign a task to each person involved in the process. For example, one person may be assigned to developing a data governance plan, while another may be assigned with educating the rest of your team of the new policies you’re developing as an aspect of facilitating change management.
Implement a data governance program
For those unfamiliar with the term, data governance refers to the management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of an organization’s data. A good data governance program defines how data is stored, backed up, archived, and protected from threats like hacking, viruses and theft. To put your plan into action, you’ll need to assign employees within your organization to oversee the management of your data and to ensure that all of the policies you’ve outlined are being implemented.
Develop strong policies
The policies an organization defines during its EDM planning are often the first data management policies ever outlined. It’s important that policies be specific and thorough so that your employees have strong guidelines to follow. Developing a strong policy for your enterprise data management plan is essential because it will define who owns the data you’re protecting, the roles of your employees, and how to implement the data management procedures you’ve put into place.
Implement efficient data recovery safeguards
It’s easy to approach EDM from the standpoint of building everything yourself, but efficiency should be at the core of your EDM planning, especially where data recovery is involved. While there are many different ways to store data, the best way to backup data is with a reliable cloud backup provider. Cloud solutions are an advanced and reliable technology that allow your organization to implement strong data recovery safeguards and eliminate data loss and downtime without the costs of managing and maintaining your own internal servers and IT departments. Even larger organizations with complex server set ups and zero room for downtime can take advantage of virtual data hosting in the cloud to eliminate internal IT, equipment upgrades and software costs.
When you decide to define and implement your business’s own EDM strategy, your team will be required to devote a lot of resources and manpower to making it happen. But EDM planning doesn’t have to be so difficult and one-sided. By searching for solutions, like cloud backup, that take the burden off of your team and contribute to fulfilling the EDM practices you’ve outlined, you’ll be able to achieve your EDM goals without stretching your resources to the breaking point.
Let Nordic Backup assist you in backing up your data to prevent data loss across your organization. Our reliable cloud backup solutions and sophisticated, zero-downtime data recovery tools have been helping businesses eliminate downtime and data loss for over 15 years.
