Companies increasingly rely on their data for decision-making. To ensure their data assets are accurate, reliable, and optimized, companies must conduct data assessments. A data assessment is a comprehensive evaluation of an organization’s data to identify issues, measure quality, and determine the effectiveness of data management practices.
Regular data assessments enable businesses to uncover inconsistencies, redundancies, and areas for improvement, providing a deep understanding of the current state of their data, identifying potential risks, and implementing corrective actions.
This proactive approach to data management ensures data integrity, supports regulatory compliance, and enhances overall business performance. For companies leveraging SAP systems, data assessments can reveal critical insights into the health of their data landscape and guide necessary improvements.
Here, we review three common types of data assessments, their intent, and what they consist of:
1. Data Quality Assessment:
This type of assessment focuses on evaluating the accuracy, consistency, and completeness of data. It involves analyzing data sets to detect errors, duplicates, and anomalies. During the analysis, experts perform diagnostics on the health of your SAP Master and Transactional Data through standardized tests.
During this assessment core dimensions for the existing data are evaluated. For Master data, it includes duplicates, completeness, consistency, and conformity to established standards. For Transactional data, experts look for incomplete records and assess the financial, performance, and governance impacts.
By identifying and rectifying data quality issues, companies can ensure that their SAP systems operate on reliable data, which is essential for effective decision-making and operational efficiency. High-quality data leads to better customer experiences, more accurate forecasting, and improved regulatory compliance.
Learn about Auritas’ data quality assessment and get recommendations on improving your data quality.
2. Data Volume Assessment:
As organizations grow, so does the volume of their data. A data volume assessment examines the size and storage requirements of an organization’s data. It helps in understanding data growth trends, optimizing storage solutions, and ensuring that the SAP system can handle current and future data loads.
By examining data volume distribution and related volume management potential, this assessment aids in identifying size reduction opportunities, optimizing database performance, ensuring efficient resource allocation, and proactive capacity planning. The assessment analyzes existing database tables and potential data archiving opportunities, estimating the resulting reduction in volume. This is crucial for maintaining system performance, managing costs, and planning for scalable data infrastructure.
Get a complimentary data volume assessment and get recommendations on size reductions from Auritas experts.
3. Data Governance Maturity Assessment:
This assessment evaluates the effectiveness of an organization’s data governance framework. It examines policies, processes, and roles related to data management to determine how well data is governed across the enterprise.
The analysis often includes four core dimensions: the framework review to assess governance across the enterprise; compliance and risk management; metrics to track progress and identify areas for improvement; and company culture and employee training.
A mature data governance framework ensures that data is managed as a strategic asset, with clear accountability and adherence to compliance requirements. It also fosters a culture of data stewardship and continuous improvement, which is vital for sustaining data quality and supporting business objectives.
A data assessment is an indispensable practice for companies operating on SAP systems. It provides a thorough analysis of data quality, volume, and governance maturity, enabling organizations to identify areas for improvement and implement effective data management strategies. By regularly conducting data assessments, businesses can ensure their data assets are robust, compliant, and capable of driving growth and innovation.
Explore the assessments in more detail to find the best fit for your goals.
Learn how companies were able to reduce database size by 84% or save over $4 Million annually by implementing experts’ recommendations.