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where am I > Home > Pain of Disparate Data
A typical organisation holds its information in a variety of
formats, in a number of different locations. Traditionally different areas
within an organisation, or even different people within the same area, will
each have their own method for tracking what’s going on. They will have their
own spreadsheets, databases, lists, Outlook folders, in-house developed tools,
whiteboards, filing cabinets, loose bits of paper plus a fair amount of
knowledge that they don't have anywhere to put so it stays in their heads.
Although all the information may be recorded somewhere (some of it duplicated
many times), it's an ineffective and costly way to manage your information.
Different organisations express different symptoms when it comes to the problems of effectively managing data, you are unlikely to suffer from all of these but here are the ones we come across most frequently:
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Information is hard to find. The information you need to get on with your job
should be a few mouse clicks away but when that information is spread out,
hours are wasted every week tracking it down.
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When you have trouble finding information, then when you do find it it’s very
tempting to take a copy. Now you have duplication and the same information
being held in multiple places. Inevitably one copy will get out of date.
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Key decisions will now be made based on out of date information or, if you are
unable to find the information in the time you have, incomplete information.
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Information needs a context, so it is not only important to be able to record
the attributes of an item, but also the relationships it has with other items.
However it is not possible to manage the relationships between rows in a
database table, cells in a spreadsheet, lists on a whiteboard and a folder in a
cupboard.
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With either no or incomplete relationships between pieces of information,
traceability and impact assessment becomes akin to archaeology.
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It is impossible to get a birds-eye view above the organization. What
management want is to instantly see the high-level position but instead they
have to interrupt the people doing the work. And if that person struggles to
find the information then, well... the bar charts may look pretty but Garbage
In-Garbage Out.
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If a person who looks after a particular bit of information is unavailable then
their information often is too.
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Spreadsheets and email do not allow themselves to be updated by multiple people
at the same time. Additionally they don’t have any validation making sure that
only valid data is recorded.
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With these tools there is also no record of who changed what and when.
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If you can’t find out who did what the next best thing is to stop people
accessing things they shouldn’t. But it’s nearly impossible to apply security
in a simple and effective manner.
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With information spread about you also risk not having it properly backed up.
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In some cases, if you are not physically in the owning area, the data cannot be
accessed.
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Information stored on whiteboards and pieces of paper is physically restricted
to a single location and is very easy to wipe out or lose.
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The data cannot be analysed or made to work cohesively.
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It will be impossible (or next to - never underestimate the determination of
heroic effort) to implement full text searching. Although this does not
actually cost you anything it robs you of a fantastic time saving technology
(imagine life without Google?).
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