Four Ways That User Experience Can Make or Break Your Data Management Plan

user experience

Regardless of what type of business or organization you are running, developing an effective data management plan is essential for a positive user experience. An effective data management plan will allow you to identify and categorize information you discover during research. It will also provide you with a plan on how to manage that data once the user discovers it. This will provide you with a greater understanding of your business metrics and trends over time.

However, in order to have an effective data management plan, you must also have a logical and intuitive user experience. Having access to loads of great data is wonderful, but if your user experience is poor, it will be more challenging to access and analyze the data. This challenge will reduce the overall productivity and effectiveness of your data management plan.

Here are four suggestions on how to optimize your user experience in a data management plan.

Ease of Access and Understanding

Having easily accessible data is crucial for a positive user experience. When a user is accessing your data management plan, they will need to have an efficient method in which they can identify, find, and access the data they are looking for. If a user is spending more time trying to figure out how to use the interface or dashboard, it can become frustrating and ruin the user experience.

Additionally, ease of access will have a greater impact if employees are using your data management plan. The more time employees spend trying to learn or decipher data from the system, the less productive they will be. When data is presented and provides information about trends or critical milestones in your business, there will be improved productivity if the information can be easily understood.

Having lots of data is one thing, but being able to understand it is another. Hours spent trying to decipher data can be spent doing other tasks. It is crucial for an effective data management plan to have data that is both easily accessible and also understandable.

Bug Tracking

Bug tracking is an important element of any data management plan to ensure it continues operating properly. Additionally, if a bug or data breach does occur, having an effective bug tracking system will reduce downtime. While it is good to invest in a high-quality custom software suite, it is certainly possible you may encounter bugs or issues in the software during its initial implementation or integration phase.

Integrating a new data management plan can be a challenging endeavor. However, being able to handle bugs and software issues efficiently will improve user experience. Including an available bug tracking system will help users feel as if their concerns are being received and answered. This will improve user experience.

Additionally, having a dedicated IT team that is standing by to take care of bugs and software issues will also greatly improve user experience. Data management can be challenging and overwhelming at times, especially if a new system is being incorporated; including a dedicated IT team will ensure a smooth transition.

Lastly, bug tracking and dedicated IT teams will create an extra defense against cyberthreats. Hackers are constantly scanning and probing for weaknesses in data systems. A data breach can be catastrophic for any business or organization.

Scalability

As businesses and organizations grow, a good data management plan will be able to scale along with the business. A data management plan that does not scale, or scales poorly, will create additional bugs or software issues. Additionally, you may need to implement a new data management software system.

It is more cost-effective to use one system that can scale with growth, instead of switching to an entirely new data management plan. The ability to scale will reduce overloaded systems during traffic spikes, increase the speed at which users can access data, and keep data more organized.

Data Storage

It is wise to create redundant measures to secure data in order to ensure your data management plan’s continuity. Depending on the type of research or data usage that is being performed, having secured data is crucial. There are different steps that can be taken to incorporate this into your data management plan’s user experience.

You can include different storage locations such as an external hard drive to store data. Having multiple locations that can hold and back up data will provide users with peace of mind that their data is secure. Additionally, you can include cloud data storage. This will allow greater accessibility on a geographic level. Cloud data storage will allow those who are doing the work or research the opportunity to be more productive. While designing your data management plan, be sure to consider how long you wish to store data. Depending on your goals, you may only need data for a short period of time, whereas other situations may require data storage for decades.

Additionally, you will want to review what type of data you choose to store. You may determine that only certain pieces of data are important. These pieces of data may come from a larger aggregation of data. If you make that determination, it will be helpful to analyze what users find most beneficial when accessing data. Taking this approach will save users time and improve accessibility. As a result of only storing necessary data, they will not have to browse through irrelevant data, thus saving more time. This will also reduce the amount of storage space you will need.

Contact Ayoka Systems

At Ayoka Systems, we can work with you to design a data management plan that will provide a positive user experience. We have years of experience and a field of experts who have worked in a variety of industries. Our design-build-manage approach to creating software will provide you with a comprehensive software suite. We will be sure to build to your specifications and subsequently provide maintenance and service after you incorporate the software into your systems. Contact us today for a consultation.

user experience