To make data usable, you need data management. While some think of data management simply moving your data into a cloud or a data lake, it’s much more than this. True data management should focus on making data informative by correlating and integrating data from multiple disparate sources and systems across your organization, adding third-party sources and transactional data created in daily operations.

Data management should also include:

• Cleansing the data to reduce errors
• Normalizing it so that aggregated information may be used for reporting, analytics, and better decision-making
• Governance for compliance with regulated industry and data privacy laws, and to ensure authorized access
• An audit trail of changes made to the data and which systems are using it