Last time I have discussed the importance of having an Accounting system and its advantages. Therefore, I thought it will be good to write about what some of the challenges in maintaining data bases are and how a good data base can be leveraged so that more analytics could be derived for business decisions.
One of the great challenges in maintaining finance, accounting or ERP system is to have a good administrator. Data entry is not an easy job even though it is fairly mechanical and finding the right person might be a cumbersome task. A plausible solution can be to disperse the responsibility of entering data to different people around the office by keeping the responsibilities functionally allocated. An example will be sales people enter sales data, accounting people input accounting data, HR person is responsible for keeping track of the employees and the information about them. The other way is to have an administrator whose general responsibilities are entering data into the system. I should underlie here that general responsibly mean primary and not additional. If the company is big the former way might be the only feasible one. However, the administrator should be completely responsible for making sure the data is entered consistently, properly, and accurately.
Another challenge is to create a data base model that reflects accurately the business model of the company. Very often firms decide to be imprecise in their data due to complexity of deals, or technology inefficiency. Even if this problem seems small and unimportant it could lead to waste of time, resources and complete lack of good data on which decisions should be made. Once a flaw in the current data base model is found it should be immediately be addressed with a better way for entering the data or upgrade of the current data base system. The fact that something had changed and the status quo is not good enough anymore might be a good indicator of growth. It is crucial to invest in a good system that will transform this growth into a sustainable opportunity.
The last but not the least actually using the data is fundamental for a successful business. It is the only empirical evidence for companies to use when making crucial decisions and therefore, the information should be used extensively by analyzing it and forecasting future trends. Once a good data base is utilized the business will be smoother and more predictive.
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