A lot can happen in a year. And it usually does! Businesses are constantly growing, shrinking, and changing. It’s normal to see your business start to accumulate errors here and there. You know your data isn’t 100% accurate and up-to-date, but who has the time or energy to go through all that work? Here are some ways to keep your business’s data accurate and up-to-date:

1. Ensure Data Validation

Your data isn’t 100% accurate and up-to-date until you go through the validation process. If you don’t go through it, the chances of inaccurate data occurring increase. When your business first begins to accumulate data, it’s probably not that important at first. But as time goes on, it becomes more important to be sure your data is accurate and up-to-date. This is especially true for new businesses that have just started gathering sales or income figures monthly/quarterly/yearly.

2. Data Name Matching

Once you’ve gone through and grabbed the key data your business needs to know, it’s time to go through the process of fuzzy name matching. This is a crucial step to take with all of your data. If you can’t match up names to their corresponding values, you are putting yourself at risk for future errors. A common way that businesses find themselves in a negative situation is by mismatches, whether between employee names and income or products and their availability status.

3. Improve Your Business Data Security

One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is not ensuring its data is secure. The more often you are forced to deal with inaccurate data, the more your business will suffer. Ensure you always have the security features on your computer and use strong passwords.

4. Look for More Data Sources

There may be other ways to acquire data for your business, aside from just directly from a source that supplies sales figures or income figures. For example, some businesses have their own sales representatives who go out and make sales. This can increase data accuracy, but it also depends on what kind of data is being acquired. Suppose your business’s sales representative is going out and grabbing sales figures directly from a customer and entering it into the system. In that case, there’s no significant risk of errors happening during that process.

5. Have a Good Data Entry Mechanism

Having a good data entry mechanism is probably one of the most important steps that can be taken to ensure your data is accurate and up-to-date. There are many different types of data entry mechanisms, but it’s important that you read about each type and determine the best way for your business to use them. One common method is the online data entry model, which utilizes internet technology to streamline the data collection process.

Conclusion

The steps above are helpful to your business but don’t forget to ensure you have in-depth knowledge about your industry’s best practices. The more you know about what’s relevant and important, the better off your business will be.