Having a clear data management strategy helps leverage the full power of your data to inform decision-making, achieve objectives, and improve operational efficiencies. ESA makes this a reality for clients.
A data management strategy can have a transformative effect for business operations and project outcomes, enabling you to meet high-level objectives while spending less time on administrative tasks like data entry and wrangling spreadsheets.
To ensure alignment with project goals and existing information systems, a data management strategy should begin with a clear understanding of workflows and user requirements. With ESA you will have a partner who has developed a proven methodology for discovery and requirements gathering. We call this process a Data Diagnostic™.
A Data Diagnostic is a detailed assessment of your current data management practices and systems. Each Data Diagnostic starts by developing personas (a set of typical user roles representing each group’s behavior, end goals, and pain points) to better understand the needs of the people who will use the system. This is followed by user task and workflow analyses, as well as a survey of the systems currently in use (paper-based systems, spreadsheets, databases, software, etc.). It includes capturing functional requirements through user tasks and understanding technical requirements such as a need for systems integrations or supporting externally produced reports.
The outputs from a Data Diagnostic may be summarized in an alternatives analysis to help guide next steps, or it can help project stakeholders reach consensus about prioritization, creating a plan for phased implementation to address data management needs. In cases where ESA will also design and implement a solution, the Data Diagnostic results in a highly visual document called a “broadsheet” that serves as a project roadmap. Broadsheets include a full list of deliverables and cost estimates (mapped to the user tasks identified in the broadsheet), and groups of phased milestone deployments.
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