Managing business data is essential for small enterprises. However, using manual procedures can lead to a massive buildup of papers. Admittedly, dealing with these documents can be overwhelming. However, embracing technology can make things easier.
As businesses adopt digitalization, the need to back up and securely store sensitive data becomes even more critical. If you are worried about losing your data, the tips below can help you effectively back up your data.
Ensure data compliance
When it comes to data management, the first thing that any small business should think about is compliance. Businesses must comply with several data protection rules and regulations or face penalties, legal ramifications, and serious brand injury. For instance, the GDPR is the most well-known data privacy regulation implemented to offer individuals greater influence over their private data.
According to a 2021 poll, 85% of SMEs know GDPR, yet 25% do not execute data cleansing operations or update their compliance processes. Now is a good time to integrate compliance into your data management strategy if you aren’t doing so already.
Reduce your retention span
How long do you keep duplicates of your backups? The essential thing to understand as a business owner is which data backups to keep and the ones to delete and how you should protect and encrypt that data.
You can also limit the amount of data you store, which will help you save money on data storage costs. Outdated backups or those that are not relevant anymore should be removed as soon as possible to prevent incurring needless charges, so keep this in mind.
Standardize your data entries
Data inconsistencies are one of the most typical data quality concerns for companies. One way to standardize data entries is by setting clear standards for entering data, such as defining common abbreviations or acronyms and establishing consistency in date formatting. That implies keeping consistent data entry labels throughout the database.
For instance, you may use the same label, such as ’email_address,’ for all email data. Inconsistencies occur when data is structured or marked inconsistently, such as email data with labels like ’email_address,’ ’emailaddress,’ and ’email’.
These inconsistencies can make using your data across platforms challenging. Manually repairing this might take a long time and expose your data to human mistakes, making it essential to standardize your data entries.
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Use multiple payment gateways
It’s common for payment gateways to experience downtime at some point, which can lead to customer frustration during checkout. This negative experience could result in the customer abandoning the purchase entirely, and they may never return. Research confirms this, revealing that 62% of customers who experience a failed transaction will not return to try again.
Sometimes, gateways may become overwhelmed with sales volume, leading to payment processing failures. You can use a secure payment gateway to safely transmit data, authenticate payment details, screen for fraud, offer multiple payment gateways and have a backup plan for when their primary gateway encounters technical difficulties.
Maintain high data quality
It is crucial to prioritize data quality maintenance to achieve reliable and consistent small business backups. Maintaining high data quality can help you eliminate duplication and validate accuracy and completeness, keeping backups relevant and well-maintained. It also ensures effective security from the backup system’s encryption and access controls, many of which depend on top-notch data quality.
Also, suitable data quality management reduces the risk of replication errors and other backup-related disasters, so feel free to consider this. Altogether, it’s clear that ensuring high-quality data is a prerequisite to successful backup and data recovery in the small business space.
Use data management tools
Consider exploring data management tools for data backup to keep your business’s information safe and sound. These tools come in many shapes and sizes and offer various backup and retrieval methods, including incremental, differential, and full backups.
They also offer features that keep backups securely stored and easily accessible through safeguards like encryption and access controls. By adopting data management tools, you can streamline your backup processes, lighten the load on your IT staff, and always have access to crucial data, even in the middle of chaos or cyber disasters.
A backup strategy guarantees that your small company is appropriately safeguarded in the event of data loss. It is a crucial kind of planning that specifies how your company will make data backups. Without such a plan, you may not be aware if your backups aren’t being conducted regularly enough to avoid a major data loss.
