3 Steps to Tidier — And More Useful — Data

If technology is at all an important tool in your CRE business, remember that it’s not fundamental. The data is.

Whether you’re tracking leases, using some sort of AI application to reduce energy use and cost, calculating a valuation, allowing automated facilities access, or doing anything else, the systems doing the work all use data. It’s like saying that no matter what people do, they have to breathe to achieve it.

But like breath, the atmospheric equivalent for software systems needs to meet minimum standards to be helpful. Filter out pollution, moderate humidity, and keep a comfortable temperature to get the most out of the work being done.

Here are 3 steps you might undertake to see where things are with your data to ensure your systems work more effectively.

1. Know what your data means. One of the trickiest things in managing data is having a clear understanding of what it all means. Typically, data will reside in records inside of some database. Each field should have a clear explanation. A classic example across industries is the concept of inventory and its value. Is it measured first in, first out? First in, last out? Averaged? Something else? Check this information for every bit of data. There should be nothing that could promote ambiguity and, as a result, misunderstanding between people or systems, especially when many different systems, written with possibly different ideas of what data means, have to communicate and coexist.
2. Give your data a good cleaning. Even if all of your data is well defined in theory, the individual examples need to comply. Over years, decades even, different people might enter information in varying ways. Mergers and acquisitions can combine incompatible styles. Names and addresses are an important example. Do you have standardized ways to represent each? Are field names long enough to avoid contractions that can create mistakes? If you operate in more than one country, can you properly format addresses for each?
3. Know where your data is and avoid repetition. Often you need the same data in different places. A tenant might need to be associated with accounting records, legal documents like leases, maintenance requests, and so forth. You don’t want to repeat basic data in each application because it’s too easy to have multiple conflicting versions. Every program needing certain information should pull it in from the authoritative source for it. You might get proper contact spelling from one place, a phone number from another, current bill from yet a different source. That is why you need to know where all the data specifically resides and how to get to it.

The more control you have over your data, the better a chance that the results you get from software will be accurate and effective. Getting to that point can be a pain, but it’s worth the effort.