Data Hygiene

Most businesses have a pool of data that encompasses the very lifeline of a business’ needs. This pool
contains sensitive data such as customer information and elements of the brand’s narrative that help us
better understand our customers, business needs, operations and what keeps this business thriving.
There are multiple things we must do in an effort to preserve, protect and store this information in a
process we call Data Hygiene. Data Hygiene takes a close look at a) all of the data that a business has, b)
what data to keep, c) what we don’t have that’s important d) what we need to collect, e)what is not
important and f) what we need to secure or discard due to data sensitivity. The data hygiene process
includes the following:

1. Review of the business operations and overall business objectives to understand what data we
   have that helps with those business objectives and what else we may need.
2. Review the way the data is structured (i.e. are all elements correctly harmonized and under the
   correct category sets so that data is manageable)
3. How are we gathering the data (i.e. do we have an appropriate and precise process to accurately
   collect all data)
4. Understand data storage techniques (i.e. is our data stored in a manner where it is private and
   secure and only authorized people within our organization have access to this data)
5. Finally, manipulating the data for modeling (i.e. once we know the overall business objectives,
   data that we have access to, ensured that the data is clean and harmonized in the manner that
   it should be – we can then begin the process of modeling data for company use.)

Remember, data analytics and modeling can only be as good as the data that we have. Good data is
clean data. Contact us to find out how we can help with your data.