Does Data Management Include Analysis?
Data management, data analytics, and data analysis… together, they make up the backbone of business, driving optimization, improving workflows, and boosting return on investments. Without these integral pieces, your leadership team would have a much more difficult time making decisions and building a successful business.
However, these terms can get confusing in that they sound similar. That’s why we’ve created this guide. We’ll discuss data management vs data analytics vs data analysis so that you have a clear understanding of what you can do with your data to drive business. Plus, we’ll provide you with more information on Data Management as a Service (DMaaS), a helpful solution for businesses with smaller IT teams.
What Is Data Management?
Data management involves collecting, validating, processing, and storing data that businesses can then use to make decisions. There are six pieces to this process:
Collecting relevant data from reliable sources of all types.
Organizing data based on how it relates to other data as well as how it will be used to achieve your business’s goals. Data has to be processed into a readable format for this to be useful.
Removing any irrelevant or unreliable data that doesn’t match appropriate data type, is outside of a certain range, or doesn’t make sense logistically.
Backing up data in case of a security breach or system failure.
Adding security measures to protect data from unauthorized users.
Presenting data to stakeholders in a way they’ll understand.
Ultimately, the goal of data management is to help your business get the most out of your data, all while staying within the policies and regulations set by your business and by local governing bodies. Such regulations may specify how to store and secure data as well as when to archive or destroy data.
Why Is Data Management Important?
The importance of data management comes down to several reasons. For one, it helps eliminate data silos. When data is compiled into one place, your business can see everything it needs to make informed business decisions. This can translate to stronger marketing campaigns, updated business strategies, increased revenue, and reduced operational costs. Plus, with centralized data, you can make decisions quickly, and employees can be more efficient at work because they won’t have to manually sort through data from several databases.
Data management is also important because it boosts your data security. With many policies and regulations in place when it comes to data, your business will already have to take some action to protect sensitive information. With data management, though, you can also ensure that data is backed up into a second source in case your primary source is either breached or crashes. This is especially important when considering that the number of data breaches in the U.S. almost tripled between 2010 and 2021. Even on a lower scale level, proper data management will ensure that only the appropriate team members are seeing the information from your databases.
What Is Data Analytics?
Data analytics is the science of collecting and interpreting data to derive new insights. It is important to note that data analytics and data analysis, while often used interchangeably, are not the same thing. Data analysis is the process of collecting, examining, and interpreting data. It is a part of data analytics, which also includes the tools used and approaches taken to analyze your data as well as the decisions you make based on your analysis. These insights can help guide decisions in a wide range of areas, such as:
Business operations
Cybersecurity
Marketing
Product and service offerings
To get a better understanding of data analytics, you should be familiar with its four types. To better explain each type, we’ll also use data analytics examples in which your marketing team finds that your website had a drop in visitors in the past month.
Descriptive: This involves interpreting data to understand what happened to get the numbers that appear. It looks at common trends and patterns that led to the results found. For our example, this part will involve recognizing that website visits dropped in the past month and by how much.
Diagnostic: This type takes descriptive analytics a step further by trying to explain why you got the data you did. To continue with our example, that means your marketing team might have found that Google did an algorithm update that made it harder for your target audience to find your content.
Predictive: This takes the data you found and uses it to forecast what might happen in the future based on the trends you see. For example, your marketing team might realize that your website visits will continue to be lower than normal due to the algorithm update.
Prescriptive: This type of analytics helps you decide what you need to do to either prevent what you predicted from happening or to ensure that it happens. For example, your marketing team might decide that you need to take a new approach to creating content that will work with Google’s algorithm and boost your findability in search results.
What Are the Benefits of Data Analytics?
Data analytics offer many of the same benefits as data management does. For example, having tools in place to help your team more deeply analyze data can provide you with insights on where your business could be more productive and where it’s losing money. From there, leadership can make decisions that increase revenue and return on investment for more cost savings.
Better efficiency due to data analytics can also make your business more competitive in the industry. After all, the more efficient your team is, the greater your output and the more time team members will have to focus on their areas of expertise and other pertinent tasks. These factors can work to attract potential customers and retain current ones.
Risky behavior is among the other insights that you might discover when analyzing data. What is your business doing that may pose a bigger problem for you further down the road? What patterns do you see that might suggest someone is stealing from your business? Answering questions such as these will guide you towards taking action to prevent these setbacks and protect your business from further issues in the future.
Now that you know a bit more about data management, data analytics, and data analysis, you might be wondering how they all relate. We cover that next.
Are Data Management and Data Analysis the Same?
Data management and data analysis are not the same. However, they are related in that they are both part of data analytics. The steps for data analytics in business are as follows:
Data Mining: This step is similar to what you do for descriptive analytics. It involves collecting data from several sources to find patterns.
Data Management: Also called data warehousing, this step focuses on putting that data you collected into one place, such as databases, to make it easier to find and interpret. It’s important to screen information as you put it into your database so you only use relevant, reliable data.
Data Analysis: This is where you gain insights and come to conclusions based on what you find.
Data Presentation: Finally, you will want to share your findings with all those involved in a project or decision. You should create a presentation that stakeholders can clearly read and understand.
Data management focuses more on collecting and storing the data so that you can use it. Data analysis, on the other hand, takes that collected data and figures out what it means and why you got those results.
Is Data Analysis Part of Data Management?
Data analysis is not part of data management. Despite being two different steps in the data analytics process, though, they do work hand in hand. You cannot conduct analysis without data management, and there would be no point in managing data without analysis. While data management and analysis are not the same thing, nor is data analysis part of data management, a data management system can be used to help with both.
What Is a Data Management System?
A data management system includes the hardware and software where you can store large amounts of data as well as the teams you have to take care of data management processes. Once your data is in the server, you can conduct searches and add or remove data as needed. Many data management systems have integrated programs that will compile data from across databases in such a way that you can more easily see and understand trends, in turn creating more informed insights. Using a data management system can save your business time by collecting this data for you rather than your team having to manually gather it and see patterns on their own.
What Is Data Management as a Service?
One reason that many businesses, especially small ones, don’t use a data management system is because they don’t have the knowledge, personnel, or resources to set it up. If you don’t know how to solve these data management problems, or don’t have the means to, Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) can be worth investing in. A third-party provider with a team of IT experts will manage and maintain all of your databases for you so that you can reap the benefits of having a data management system without having to create it on your own.
What Are the Benefits of Data Management as a Service?
There are several benefits to using DMaaS, including:
Predictable Costs: When you choose to use DMaaS, you know exactly what you are getting and for how much. That is one less cost you have to worry about fluctuating on a regular basis.
Expert Partners: DMaaS providers work with all types and sizes of businesses. When you partner with one, you can be sure that they are experts in data management and can help you find the right solutions for your business.
Less Downtime: A lot of business revolves around making decisions based on data. DMaaS providers will alert you of issues and help you recover data to keep your team productive even when problems with databases may arise.
Better Insights: This part of DMaaS is where the data analysis comes in. Tools in the platform can pick up on patterns and relationships in the data for you so that you can discover trends that you might not have noticed otherwise. Having these insights in your back pocket will keep your business competitive in the industry.
Improved Security: A DMaaS platform can help you set up permissions so that only essential employees can access data. This will reduce the odds of your business experiencing a data breach.
Backed Up Data: A DMaaS provider will back your data up to their servers. In case of a system crash or a hacker breaking into your system, you will still be able to recover your data with little downtime.
So where do you find a reliable Data Management as a Service provider? At Moser Consulting!
Moser Consulting: Your Key to Quality Data Management
If you face any data management challenges, turn to Moser. When you partner with us, you are getting more than a service provider; you’re getting an extension of your team. To make sure that we put you and your business’ goals at the forefront of our solutions, we have an extensive onboarding process that involves one of our team members spending 48 to 72 hours at your business location to:
Familiarize themselves with your IT environments
Receive the necessary contact information
Identify which problems you need solved
From there, we work alongside you to create a plan and train staff on how to improve databases and related workflows. When you choose to use our platform for data management, you’ll also receive:
Database administration such as routine maintenance, backups, patching, and reporting on the environment.
High availability for capacity planning, troubleshooting, setup, and configuration.
Monitoring at the CPU, memory, or disk level as well as at the instance level.
Database consulting in areas such as performance tuning, issue resolution analysis, and SQL development.
24/7 support when you need assistance with your system.
Database performance tuning such as query analysis or index analysis and related recommendations.
To learn more about the data management solutions we offer, visit our Data & Analytics webpage or contact us.
