They say “data is the new oil“.

That may be.

But the real issue for most growers and any organization for that matter is how do we use the data you have and get more business value from it?

Just like you care for and manage your inventory to preserve its value you must inculcate your organization to care for and value the data that represents all the various aspects of your operation.

There are several practices that you can perform in your organization to help improve the value that you get from the data you have available.

Clean

Make sure your data is clean. This includes making sure that if a field is supposed to be a number is a numeric field and not a number with a text note after it. Sometimes people in a rush will make a number turn into text because they add other characters to it.

If the field is textual is the formatting consistent? Spelling?

If a field is supposed to be a price make sure the formatting and data type is a decimal number.

Make sure that the units are consistent. For example in your pricing are your units consistent or at least obvious?

If you need decimal values do you need 13 decimal places? Many times in tools like Excel when you do math operations on real numbers you end up with a high number of decimal places. Make sure your formatting and field sizing is consistent for what you need. Most folks don’t need 13 decimal places.

Do you have have 5 inventory items that are the same thing only the names use different abbreviations or capitalization because someone created a new one because they didn’t take the time to find the original? Or some other variations that create multi-records when they are really the same?

Timely

Make sure your data is timely. This means multiple things. Is your data “in time” and does your data indicate “what time”. Time here means time or date depending on granularity requirements.

Make sure you are reporting and ‘harvesting’ your data as your business operates. Dont wait until the end of the season or year to put it all together and see that the data says.

Have your staff build weekly (at least) reporting packages for operational, planning, production, logistics, sales, accounting and other important data. Make sure your key business metrics are included for the indicated period.In doing this you start to build a library of data that makes period to period comparisons easier to generate.

By settling into the habit of looking at your key data in phase with the the business operations you will see potential issues earlier. You will be looking at the data in the context of the current operation so that when you ask “Why is it like that” you have a good chance to get answers. At the end of the year it will be way harder to remember.

When you create your data make sure it is time stamped accurately so that the data can be correlated correctly. Date, week of the year and other date oriented values with your data reports can be very valuable and add veracity to what is reported.

Visibility

Make sure your data is visible and accessible to the decisions makers in your organization. Not having the right data at the right time is akin to being blind to part of your business.

Publish reports to the employees who need and influence the operation. Make sure they see you managing with the data and they understand the importance.

Visibility enhances transparency, identifies errors and issues sooner and speeds communication and helps make sure everyone is seeing the same story.

Relevant

Make sure that the data is the right data you need to see and consider for decisions.

Too many times a report takes on a lift of its own and continues to be produced by the owner or some automated process long after its usefulness has eroded.

Assess the reports you are generating or receiving and make sure they are relevant to the business needs. Business evolves and the data and reporting you need should evolve with it.

Accurate

Make sure your data is accurate.

Quantities, prices, unit of measure, data entry accuracy and reconciliation or variance analysis all influence the quality and usefulness of your data.

Too many times we have seen data where some numbers are in one unit of measure and other numbers are in a different unit of measure and when totaled the numbers don’t make sense.

A couple of years ago I was working with the head of accounting of one of our clients. He walked into the room where I was and asked “Can you explain why I have a 10 million dollar purchase price variance that showed up on my General Ledger yesterday?” I didn’t have an immediate answer but after some research we discovered that one of the receiving clerks had mis-entered a material receipt unintentionally adding a few extra zeros to the received quantity. Granted some additional system protections were needed to catch these egregious entry errors but you get the point.

A couple of zeros mis-typed can lead to large data error or problems. Multiply small errors across thousands of records each year in your business and you can see the potential for accuracy issues. When data is inaccurate the decisions derived from it will be inaccurate.

Takeaways

All of these areas can be implemented with small gradual changes to your organization. None individually may yield instant results but over time these habits will improve your data quality and that can lead to better business results.