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How to secure your product data is future-proof?

 September 2, 2022 by Linda Kronby

Data Quality is important for various reasons. From the most obvious, that it can cost your business money if not accurate to maybe less so, is the data you are collecting relevant? Future-proofing your data by focusing on the internal organization around your data quality and also the systems and how-to´s are equallty important.

Let´s start with your internal organization.

1. Understand your consumers

The primary focus of data quality management is to meet the data quality requirements of its data consumers (consumers as in people or machines) taking into account both current and future needs.

2. Set your strategy and share your vision

There´s a need for alignment and commitment within the organization. Important to set the strategy, purpose and direction to create conditions (via policies, processes and allocation of resources) to reach the data quality objectives. Top-down!

3. Select ambassadors and share responsibility

Data quality within an organization is everyone´s responsibility. Make sure to empower competent and committed stakeholders.

4. Establish processes

Remember that managing the quality of your data is a continuous process that needs constant improvement (see first point about future needs).

A continuous process is what future-proofing is all about. Trying to anticipate the future and develop methods to minimize negative effects surprises and stress. Easier said than done but here are some concrete examples that you can start with today already. Excel can work fine if you have limited sets of data. If a lot more and complex, use the contact information at the bottom to start the discussion.

1. Completeness - Identify what data is missing and maybe also find out why and fix it.

2. Conformity - Make sure all the data stored in the same format. Use standards if applicable. GS1 is a great source for that.

3. Relevancy - Who is to consume your data, people, machines or both. What do they use the data for?

4. Accuracy - Identify what data that is not correct or no longer valid.

5. Consistency -  What data values give conflicting information. Identify and fix.

6. Duplicates - What data attributes or records are repeated? Are several sources needed?

7. Timeliness - Identify if your data is out of date. Can it be cleaned out or should it be replaced?

8. Integrity - What data is missing or not referenced? GDPR or else?

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How to secure your product data is future-proof?

August 25, 2022 by Linda Kronby

Let´s start by defining future-proof. Future-proofing is a process. A process where one anticipates the future and develop methods to minimize negative effects, surprises, or even stress. Besides always allowing for your product data to be continuously updated you can also select a solution that is flexible enough to handle future changes. The type of changes that could affect your product data are typically consumer demands and/or regulations, but also the common drivers for change such as social, technology, environment, economics and politics.

The recent years shift in consumer demands for information about the products they are buying was mainly driven by technology (internet) allowing for product data to be available when purchasing online. Now it is shifting towards sustainability. Soon all products must have a digital twin that can give you answers to the full story of its supply chain. Ecodesign for Sustainable Products or Digital Product Passport. An initiative that some say will make GDPR feel like a mild breeze.

Selecting the right platform

To anticipate the future changes and keep up with both consumer demands and regulations require a flexible system. You should be looking for something that is built on state-of -the-art technology, is flexible and can easily scale and adapt to your needs.

To ensure that enterprises can have an agile roadmap and allow for an innovative culture, they must work on having a flexible architecture. This is the only way to deploy new features rapidly and retain control of their destiny”, says Peter J Nilsson, Chairman of the Board at EightOcean AB.

1. The platform should be modern and designed for scalability to ensure the system can cope with todays and future traffic.

2. The architecture in the system is to be built on microservices where every piece is easily replaceable. This allows you to react fast to new technology trends, add new features and ultimately implement innovations. Each service should handle a specific business domain or task and have its own data store. Make sure you can create, upload and send data instantly.

3. Secure the technical platform is cloud agnostic. Gives you better leverage on both pricing and other new technology

4. Right use of new technology, such as AI. Make sure it serves its purpose and brings value for the user.

5. Make sure it is headless or has the possibility to function as such. (The term headless means that a software application or program can function without a frontend. This usually means that it has to be connected to another frontend application or interface via API to achieve full functionality for end users.)