Five Key Practices for Effective Data Hygiene

Effective data hygiene should be an ongoing and proactive practice to keep the optimum health of an organization’s data.

Think of it like washing hands after touching door handles, petting dogs and cats, working outside, or before handling food or eating. Our hands can get dirty from a variety of sources and washing them regularly can help prevent infections. And even if you may have washed your hands 20 minutes ago or an hour ago, that doesn’t mean they’re as clean as they were right after you washed them.

In much the same way, data, whether it’s housed in an AMS, LMS, online community, or elsewhere is going to be “touched”. If the information on members or sponsors is getting used on a regular basis–and it should be, then good data hygiene practices should be employed.

Let’s look at a few areas that should be reviewed or employed and why.

Identify orphan records

Very simply put, orphan records can be described as pieces of information not connected to other pieces of information. Examples are phone numbers, addresses, or orders that are not linked to accounts or contacts in a database, for example. At the very least, these orphan records may be unnecessarily eating up storage space or cluttering your system with records that simply aren’t needed.

Run exception reports

Find records that have information that simply doesn’t belong where it is or may be missing key pieces of information. For example, if your association has companies as members, every company should have a primary contact in your system of record. If they don’t, you want to identify these accounts without primary contacts. Similarly, you may find contact records that have two orders for the same product- membership, for example.

Meet regularly

Meet with staff regularly to better understand processes and to learn about data problems that keep them from doing their jobs effectively. Some needs could be addressed with retraining initiatives or securing better reporting. Fixing problems with processes would be another realistic outcome. For example, not being able to obtain needed demographic information due to an open text field might be resolved through the creation of a list of values for selection by members and constituents.

Get feedback from internal users

Ensure that this feedback is shared with the organization’s technical team. The technical team doesn’t necessarily know the day-to-day realities or the pain points, but they can help develop solutions if they are supplied with information. Developers may have tested software based on expected outcomes but not on edge cases like mistyped or misspelled words. Give them opportunities to improve what is being produced by coordinating conversations with staff from membership, events, finance, and other departments.

Focus on usability

 Poor usability is going to lead to poor data hygiene and to data problems. If it’s easier to set up a new username and password than it is to go through a password reset process, for example, then the association is going to experience challenges with duplicate contact records. This concept of usability can also be applied to staff. If a system or a process is difficult to use, then the organization is creating an environment where workarounds and spreadsheets will thrive as staff will still find a way to get their jobs done. Unfortunately, it will be in a way in which data and departments are siloed rather than in a collaborative manner.

Without good data, you’re not going to get good or accurate results. Ensuring good data is not a one-time fix but should be a part of ongoing processes. Review records periodically, run reports, meet with team members, actively solicit feedback, and focus on usability, and your association will be on its way to good data hygiene and healthier data. For additional support with data-related challenges and initiatives, contact the team at IntelliData: 844.237.DATA (3282) or info@intellidata.tech.