Every bit of information that is created within your organization needs some care and attention. Information, or data, created yet unmanaged is as good as data with a date-expired tag on it. Organizations are now beginning to understand that data management is not just about an efficient IT system but also about good business.

CIOs are now accepting the need for ‘data parenting’ within an organization. An efficient way to ‘parent’ the data would be to institutionalize data management in the organization in an integrated manner. Data goes through five distinct stages during its life: design, development, deployment, management, and governance. Integrated data management means acquiring a toolset that would help data pass the different stages of its life, and in turn, enable teams and individuals within the organization make the most of the data that they have created.

Each team in an organization designs and develops data specific to its requirements. But there are tasks that require collaboration between teams if execution has to be effective. Efficiently managed data where each team can access and manage data created by another team makes collaboration truly successful. Enterprises now understand that on the path to operational excellence there cannot be any diversions from efficient data management. There is also increased awareness now on the risks involved in traditional approaches to data management.

We live in an era of information overload. If this information is not managed well, it could clog our systems, dry out resources, and over-expose outdated data and under-utilize recent data. This in turn leads to critical gaps in information that affects the organization’s abilities in the market. Through efficient data management, it can manage data well, cut storage costs and remain up-to-date with critical market information. Data that needs to be retired uses up precious storage and adds to operational costs. On the other hand, new and updated data has a high chance of getting lost or under-utilized in a system that is not efficiently governed.

CIOs today manage complex, heterogeneous IT environments. An added challenge is to manage data that is growing at a pace faster than ever before. CIOs need to capture, categorize, store, mine and pull intelligence from enterprise data. Data management is not an option but has become a necessity for businesses to remain relevant in the market. Today, data is being managed as a live resource that goes through the various life stages, like generation, degeneration and destruction.

For CIOs, efficient data management means deploying business critical tools and applications at a fast pace that can encompass the requirements across the enterprise. If a team that develops the data uses a set of tools that does not match the tools that the next team who works on that data uses, it would lead to operational inefficiency, and finally, loss of business. An efficient data management has a direct correlation with work efficiency.