Top 10 Reasons to Outsource Your Enterprise Data Management

Enterprise Data Management for Businesses

Data is precious. Your customer’s data in the wrong hands can spell doom. We often witness cyber-attacks on companies every day and read articles on how millions of user data get stolen. Some companies are held for ransom, while others are humiliated by not being able to protect their data. The point is your data is at risk.

Most of us are familiar with Trojans, malware, phishing, spamming, spoofing, viruses, etc. Being attacked by cyber terrorists is no fun. This blog deep dive into 10 reasons to outsource your enterprise data management.

What is enterprise data management?

Organizations can integrate, govern, incorporate, retrieve, and store data for internal and external processes. Modern businesses must be entirely data-driven, failing which there will be several issues.

Data management ensures the accuracy, availability, and accessibility of data that must be processed and analyzed. Otherwise, it is not possible to make informed business decisions. You cannot decide on a whim. There must be solid reasons, and data should back it.

The main elements of any enterprise data management strategy include the following: data governance, data security, data integration, data quality, and data management. There is a lot of work that goes into maintaining them. There are times when businesses cannot handle specific tasks, and enterprise data management is one of them. This is where outsourcing it to an experienced partner can save the day.

10 reasons to outsource your enterprise data management:

If you are still doing data management in-house, here are 10 reasons to outsource your enterprise data management to make informed decisions out of data.

Reason #1: Cost-Effectiveness

Managing your data is a pivotal part of running a business. A few companies can operate with an IT team of one or two, but the need for a larger team increases severely once your organization grows. Your current IT team may not have experience as data scientists, and this is where getting professionals makes sense.

Doing things in-house will bode well for most activities, but data management is a different ball game. Outsourcing your enterprise data management is one of the easiest ways for businesses: on certain scales can save money and even be flexible in terms of operations. The team you outsource data management will have the necessary hardware and infrastructure to offer a range of services pertaining to your data.

In-house data management makes sense when you have limited or specific needs. When your data needs become sophisticated, your in-house team could become bloated and ineffective. On the other hand, with an outsourced vendor, you can scale up and down according to how requirements change. Since most of them offer 24*7 support, you can have reliable support throughout the day. You can set the terms with the vendor and sign off on the project.

Outsourcing your data management saves you a significant amount of capital. Here’s how:

• You only pay for what you need.
• It helps reduce labor costs associated with full-time employees.
• You can scale based on your requirements without going on a panic-driven hiring spree.
• You don’t have to spend on developing infrastructure to manage data.
• Zero costs to train your employees.

Reason #2: Expertise

Guess what? Enterprises outsource data management to get the right talent. Hiring data experts with loads of experience can affect your spending capabilities during the next hiring season. Outsourcing your enterprise data management enables you to connect with the best in the business without having to pay a bomb.

Having a “dedicated team” means that they work only for you, and your KPIs for data management are theirs too. A dedicated team is more efficient than an in-house team since getting the right vendor takes little time compared to putting together an efficient cross-functional team.

Below are some of the benefits of having a dedicated team of experts handling data management:

• Cost efficiency is a significant motivation for outsourcing. It also allows you to avoid administrative and legal costs. No need to pay for infrastructure, licenses, workspace, office setup, etc.
• You have full control over the team’s management.
• You will get access to a data team of varying compositions, which will drive your data management to the next level.
• The outsourcing partner can take care of your entire data management project and have a leader liaison with your management to keep you updated.
• They follow proven methodologies and time-tested data management practices.

Also Read : How is AI driving continuous innovation in finance?

Reason #3: Compliance

It has never been a better time to comply with local and global privacy regulations. The data management vendor you outsource should address these risks while signing the contract. When you negotiate the security provisions in your contract, consider the vendor’s previous performance to see if they have been lackadaisical with regulatory compliance.

Here are a few more ways you can assess the vendor’s ability to stay compliant:

• Check their internal policies and procedures considering the sensitivity of the information.
• Ask them how they collect and handle their customer’s data.
• Do they follow the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which supports robust data protection?
• Do they keep sensitive data in encrypted form?

It is wise to double-check whether your vendor is compliant with the regulatory standards. The data management vendor is most likely to adhere to the regulations as they must accede to them for every client they work with. It doesn’t hurt to check, though.

Reason #4: Cloud-Based Solutions

Hiring the services of a cloud-based outsourcing partner helps manage enterprise-level data regardless of where it resides. Like every other cloud-based solution, it offers you the flexibility to pay based on usage. You can easily save upfront costs, which you’d be paying if you were to choose a solution that isn’t based on the cloud.

Here are some of the key capabilities of cloud-based data management solutions:

• It integrates with multiple data sources, both on-premises, and cloud.
• Provides consistent data access, usage, support, security, and performance in various data sources.
• Automates data and process flows by integrating several cloud services and downstream applications.
• It enables employees to access data from wherever they are, thus helping them collaborate seamlessly.
• There are no setup or infrastructure costs associated with cloud-based data management.
• Since cloud-based solutions do regular automated security updates and patches, they are considered more secure.

Cloud-based solutions help you streamline and organize your business requirements while allowing you to scale as needed. It offers customizations and helps save substantial upfront costs, and several use cases are associated with it.

Also Read : How Is Data Analytics Used in Business?

Reason #5: Risk management

Sharing data between different entities invites trouble. If checks and balances are in place, the entire transaction and the relationship between you and the data management vendor will be smooth. Businesses need to minimize the risks associated with outsourcing by ensuring there are quality checks that happen regularly. Rigorous standards should be applied to critical business functions, not just outsourced data.

Below are some of the risks of outsourcing your enterprise data management:

• Privacy and security breaches.
• Technology mismatch.
• Suspicious remote access protocol.
• Lapses in service delivery.
• Communication and process barriers.
• Lack of process control.

Most of the above problems can be mitigated with a risk management process. How can you mitigate the risks when you outsource data management? Here are a few things you can do:

• Vet your vendors. Discuss with your legal counsel and ensure they check their written standards and data policies. Review how they assess their company’s data security programs.
• Check out their vendor management policy. Make a list of all the vendors that the vendor you plan to choose uses.
• Go through the organization’s history, the data management issues they’ve previously dealt with, how they found a solution, the technology stack they use to solve clients’ issues, etc.
• If possible, have in-person meetings at their office to understand how compatible both of you will be.
• Understand their resource availability and the depth of their talent pool.

Reason #6: Focusing on core business

Businesses should focus on activities that make them money, as simple as that. Even though data management is a pivotal activity, it is still considered a back-office operation. Outsourcing enterprise data management ensures that you run your business efficiently. When you outsource to a trusted vendor, you no longer have to worry about your data.

If your data is appropriately managed, it will improve your overall efficiency. No one will even notice anything. When data management is inefficient, you will also find issues in other areas of your business. It can have multi-pronged effects whose existence no one would have noticed if data management was proper. Enterprise data management cannot be ignored, but you cannot prioritize it more than revenue-generating activities. This is precisely why leaving data management to the experts is best.

Your data management partner has the right tools and resources to take care of your data efficiently. Their versatile capabilities also help with areas associated with managing your data. It is a win-win for everyone. Building a data management team from the ground up is an arduous task. It can lead you astray from your core tasks and serves a false sense of purpose, especially since you are better off outsourcing it.

Reason #7: Scalability

One of the benefits of outsourcing enterprise data management is that you can increase resources and reduce them after your data issues are addressed. Enterprise data management requires a lot of manual work to maintain quality. Outsourcing your data management can be your secret weapon to scale it. In-house data management is cumbersome, requires a lot of effort, and asks for a hands-on approach.

Things get complicated when your business sees traction. Why? Because that’s when how you operate changes. Tasks that could be easily handled become major time sinks. It distracts you from your core business– like your data management. It gets complex and time-consuming as you scale. Most companies will find it stifling to keep pace with the changing demands for data quality protocols.

Outsourcing your enterprise data management is the simplest and fastest way to address your data management issues. No matter how fast things change, you can choose a data management partner with the right capabilities to handle any scale. The vendors have specialists who have encountered various data-related issues of all scales and complexities. No capital investment is involved, nor must you upgrade your equipment to meet the changing data needs.

Also Read : How Is Data Analytics Used In Finance And Banking Sector?

Reason #8: Business continuity

Data loss, corruption, and downtime are normal and not aberrations. It can have short-term and long-term effects on your business, some of which can be debilitating. Having a disaster recovery plan ensures that you are in a position to reduce disruption or damage that helps you recover quickly. You must analyze potential threats, maintain your systems in proper condition, and choose innovative solutions that guarantee business continuity. Leveraging innovative hardware and software can save enterprises hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is one of the reasons why organizations are adopting cloud-based data management.

Would your company stay afloat without data? Most businesses would respond with an emphatic “No.” Why? Because losing data can abruptly stop even day-to-day business functions. You must outsource your data management plans if you are serious about business continuity, as you should be.

Here’s how outsourcing helps with business continuity and reducing downtime:

• You’ll get access to experts who have the latest tools and technologies to make your business recover from any data disaster.
• 24*7 support is available.
• Creating a business continuity plan from scratch can be an expensive and complicated process.
• They help you meet compliance requirements.
• Your data management partner will identify your critical assets and functions. It determines the downtime each asset and function can withstand before it becomes unusable.
• They will plan an individual recovery program for each of the risks that are identified.

Reason #9: Providing real-time insights

Outsourcing your data management reduces the cost of analytics and increases the speed with which you get insights from your data. There is a belief that outsourcing data management can reduce the visibility of one’s data within the organization. That’s not the case at all since real-time insights are possible. When you outsource your data management, the chances of collecting inaccurate or inconsistent data reduce to a great extent. Your in-house team can only identify a few abnormalities if they have the necessary expertise and tools.

Your outsourcing partner’s intelligent data management systems will be capable of navigating complex data sets and deriving meaningful insights from them.

Your outsourcing partner will ensure all your employees can view and analyze the most recent information. The data is made available quickly. The efficient way the data is collected, handled, sorted, and managed helps you find the data efficiently. Businesses can easily make data-driven decisions without going through complex processes. Outsourcing your enterprise data management allows access to your data on par with how it would have been had the data been available only in-house.

Reason #10: It helps you stay ahead of the curve

Finding the right enterprise data management partner helps you gain from their competence. Newer technologies keep popping up. Adding the latest technologies to your repertoire can be exhausting and expensive unless it is part of your core ability or expertise. You might also be lured into using resources that might need to be more helpful.

Having a professional organization helps you keep your operations lean. It will make a massive difference to how you operate on a daily basis since your data is completely managed by experts who know what works and what doesn’t. The onus is on them to ensure that your data is appropriately managed.

Wrapping up:

No matter how big, most enterprises cannot handle enterprise data management. Too many aspects are involved in data management for a business whose expertise needs to be to handle this fully. Finding the right outsourcing partner is pivotal to getting your data management right. Once you find the perfect partner, you can worry about other aspects of your business.

Zuci is a well-respected end-to-end data management outsourcing partner. Let us help your business grow with our intelligent data management system. Get in touch with us to understand how exactly we will help with enterprise data.

FAQs:

1. Why do we outsource data management?

Data needs to be appropriately managed and has to be accessible when required. It helps establish processes and policies to ensure they stay in the right hands. Outsourcing data management is critical as it affects your bottom line.

2.Why is data management critical?

Data management promises accuracy, accessibility, and availability of your data. They can be analyzed, and you can make better and more informed business decisions. The data collected cannot be synthesized into analysis without proper data management.

3.What is data outsourcing?

In data outsourcing, the data owner isn’t responsible for its management. Why is that a big deal? The external providers to whom the data is outsourced offer data management services.

4.What is outsourcing and its importance?

Outsourcing is defined as taking the services of a third-party organization so that the company can focus on its core operations. It helps companies achieve scalability, increase operational efficiency, reduce operating costs, and perform specific tasks. Usually, less critical tasks, or those the company needs to gain expertise, are usually delegated to an outsourcing partner.

5.What are the four main reasons to outsource?

The four main reasons to outsource are:

• To improve the focus of the organization on core tasks.
• Increase the efficiency for functions which isn’t the company’s expertise.
• Control operation costs.
• Increase their competitive advantage by streamlining operations.

6.What are the Top 5 reasons companies use outsourcing?

The top five reasons companies use outsourcing are:

• It helps cut off uneconomical expenses that will yield significant savings.
• Outsourcing gives you access to experts in your outsourcing tasks.
• Enables your company to use your internal resources more efficiently.
• It helps delegate functions that are usually difficult to manage or control.
• It can also be helpful to reduce risks as the outsourcing partner becomes responsible for your compliance.

7.What are the three objectives of data management?

The objectives of data management are as follows:

• To make management easier by leveraging the latest tools and systems.
• To ensure reliable verification of results.
• To make sure that data cycles through its proper lifespan.

8.What are the benefits of data management in every enterprise?

Below are the benefits of data management:

• It consolidates data across several sources, thereby increasing your efficiency.
• It helps to have a consistent data architecture that scales based on how your enterprise scales.
• It ensures that your data is compliant with the latest government regulations.
• It helps you get access to high-quality data for accurate analysis.

9.What are the three benefits of having a data management strategy?

Having a data management strategy helps in the following ways:

• It helps minimize potential errors by creating processes and policies for using data.
• Builds trust in the data used to make impactful decisions across the organization.
• Companies can manage market fluctuations better and react to business needs when a sturdy strategy is in place.

10.What companies outsource data centers?

Data center outsourcing refers to the complete or partial outsourcing of data center infrastructure, including staff. Companies that don’t want to keep their IT infrastructure and data in-house are the ones that outsource it to a data center.

Equinix, Coresite, Verizon, Cyxtera Technologies, NTT Communications, etc., are some of the top data center companies in the world.