How to Use Data to Your Business Advantage
The retention of data has become one of the most pressing issues facing businesses today. From Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) to Basel II, new laws and regulations introduced by governments and international bodies are forcing companies to address the way they manage data from conception through to disposal. Compliance has propelled storage from back-office obscurity to the top of the boardroom agenda and with its newly raised profile comes increased budgets, the likes of which would have previously been unimaginable for storage architecture.
However, long before compliance was an issue, companies were beginning to realize that data – one of a company’s greatest assets – could deliver real business benefits if managed effectively. The risk now is that the pressures of compliance will distract companies from realizing the full business value that can be derived from their data, forcing them to tackle the issues of auditing and protecting data instead of how to use it to their business advantage. But this need not be the case.
Before undertaking any project, customers should develop a four-point plan to understand their storage needs based on the business and legal requirements for their data. By taking time to identify the data that is important to an organization, and understanding how to manage, share and protect it, forward-thinking companies can manage data from its point of creation right through to retrieval.
All data is not equal. The first, and perhaps the most daunting step in data management is to assess which data is important to an organization. This is determined by its usefulness to the business and its associated risk. Identifying which data is important from a business and compliance perspective, what grades of data are stored within an organization, and who needs to see it, are the basic building blocks of a successful data management project. Similarly, taking time to understand the priorities that different parts of the business place on different data, and understanding the process and reporting capabilities that help them use this data effectively is essential. Everything else will stand or fall based on how complete the original data capture is. Decisions based on high-quality information will have better foundations than those based on poor or incomplete information.
Only once data has been categorized in relation to its business value and risk, how it needs to be accessed and by whom, should consideration be given to the type of storage solution to implement. The new Basel II Accord requires financial service companies to store a vast amount of customer data so they can reduce the amount of capital set aside to cover risks. Access to this information after the transaction is completed will seldom be required, if ever, but compliance dictates that companies manage and protect this information in an appropriate way. In contrast, timely access to customer correspondents, audio recordings of customer complaints and access to a company’s transactional database can improve both the quality and speed of customer service, and even reduce customer service costs.
With this in mind, enabling the business to access information at a speed/cost ratio, which reflects the value of the data to the organization, is a compelling business argument. Getting the ratio right is intrinsically linked to storage optimization. As storage becomes more sophisticated it is possible to architect a consolidated physical or virtualized storage network, which combines existing storage infrastructure with technology. While it may make sense to store primary, high value data on disk, it can be up to 50 times cheaper to store tertiary data on tape. Architecting a storage infrastructure in this way ensures data storage costs grow in proportion to the relevant ‘active’ data in a company’s disk drives and not because of the total volume of data that needs to be stored. Cleaning and de-duplicating a company’s existing storage can also yield significant re-use of space.
Keeping data is one thing but keeping it securely is another. An information audit in the early stages can help to assess the best types of storage to implement and will also ensure that safeguards are put in place to protect the data that falls under the corporate governance banner. SOX, for example, requires companies to file an internal control statement with its annual report that includes ‘an assessment… of the effectiveness of the internal control structure and procedures of the issuer for financial reporting’. Identifying this data in the early stages and establishing reporting and auditing capabilities to demonstrate storage management policies and processes are compliant, will ensure that systems and procedures are reliable and that the data is protected.
An effective data management plan is, of course, only the starting point. Carried out thoroughly it will provide a solid foundation on which a comprehensive storage environment can grow. It will also be a business environment that is better able to respond to users because the data is understood; better able to provide a business edge because data is organized; and better placed to adhere to regulations because information is managed from conception through to disposal.