While establishing effective business processes around data monitoring is akin to seeing a doctor, having the proper, governed business processes in place around remediating identified data errors is more like receiving a prescription and ensuring that you take the entire dosage. When combined, these business processes form a closed loop of data remediation that can reduce business process interruption and increase operational efficiency.
High Performing Data Cleansing
A high performing data cleansing process should be able to operate on its own as well as on the backend of a monitoring business process. When operating independently, the cleansing business process needs to flow the cleansing work through to the proper users at the proper time, facilitate approval routings, and track those cleansing activities from beginning to end.
As with all information governance business processes, getting users to live as close to the data involved as possible is key to successful execution. Giving users access to the tools they want to use in the way they want to use them can help them acclimate to and successfully adopt these business processes throughout the organization.
Flow and Tracking of Data Cleansing
The flow and tracking of a cleansing business process also needs to be easily adaptable to different areas of the business. While it is easy to say that all departments and regions will standardize on one cleansing business process, the reality is that users in different cultures and parts of the organization will need to work with business processes tailored for their needs.
Regardless of these customizations, however, global standards should be set for the business processes and the best practices that measure their effectiveness. To this end, key metrics must be created throughout the execution of the cleansing business processes and tracked against service level agreements and other KPIs to ensure these ongoing business processes are running to plan.
The goal of the cleansing business processes is to resolve data issues before they cause business interruptions, overruns or other issues. It is important to understand that implementing these business processes takes time and refinement over the course of their implementation. Just as cleansing continues to make data better, feedback loops for continuous improvement should also be included in the process. The better the cleansing process, the less time bad data can exist in your systems, which in turn will lead to smoother organizational executions.