Business Data Management
What even is business data management?
Excellent place to start the discussion is at the fundamental business process. The core function of a business is to provide goods and services with external parties at a price that is profitable. So from this very basic model, we have a number of players and items involved as well as a well-formed process that needs to be followed.
The players are "the business", the "consumer", the "items" involved in the transaction.
The process is the act of creating an invoice which forms a basic contract between "the business" and the "consumer" for the sale of the "item(s)". This includes the price as well as any tax involved.
This is the core set of business data. Depending on the nature of the business and products that you sell, this data can be more useful or potentially unimportant. When you purchase an item at a grocery store, the exact same process is being followed, however there is no detailed customer information collected by the grocery store (unless you are scanning a rewards card, in which case there is an extremely detailed profile being built). An invoice is generated in the form of a receipt which also includes the payment information.
Why business data management matters
Once the fundamentals are clear, the practical questions are straightforward: can someone else understand the record, can the business recover it when something goes wrong, and can the team use it to make a better decision?
Three reasons make this worth attention:
- Continuity. A detailed customer, order, inventory and supplier record makes a change in ownership easier to explain and manage.
- Resilience. Clear access to the business record reduces the risk of being unable to trade when a provider, system or relationship fails.
- Better decisions. Operational reporting gives owners, operators and mentors something more useful than a financial total alone: evidence of what is working and what needs attention.
