05/06/2019

Daily Buzz: Hone Your Data Management Process

Add these housekeeping tips to your data management plan

Your member database is a portal to a lot of information—like, a lot. Which is why, if it’s not organized well, it can be hard to find what you’re looking for or determine what data is even valuable.

Audra Hopkins from the Web Scribble blog says to think of your member database like a room full of documents. “You wouldn’t ever want to keep important information about your members strewn around, crumpled up, mixed up with other files and papers, right?” she says. “If your member database looks like a cluttered desk, you can imagine the frustration you’ll have getting any productive work done.”

So, get organized. And start with backing up your data. “With all of the effort taken to learn about members and collect the data you find, you don’t want it all to just disappear into the void with the blink of an eye,” Hopkins says.

From there, your team should develop an organization-wide data management process. What exactly this plan looks like will depend on your association, but it should include items such as how to properly enter data into the system.

As for outdated data? Get rid of it. “It could actually be what’s creating chaos in your organization scheme,” Hopkins says. “To avoid this abundance of old data, you’ll want to annually ‘sweep’ your member database of member data that is no longer relevant. This also goes for data that has been updated or changed—out with the old and in with the new!”

Please select this link to read the original article from Associations Now.