data manipulation

Not every database project involves ongoing data management. Sometimes what is needed is a data manipulation, data matching or data migration exercise, either to bring a database up to scratch, or to solve a particular business problem. Say you have two sets of existing or projected information and you need to know the extent to which they match or overlap. One illustration of this would be a leading UK organisation that was restructuring and wished to determine the suitability of existing employees for roles in the new structure, where ABC provided the mechanisms to manage this process. Another is a well-known industrial services company that acquired a competitor where we helped merge two sets of customer data (click here for further details). Or maybe you need to juggle a number of variables (time, geography, cost and/or price, data categories, etc) for a specific analysis. Basically if you have any requirement that involves manipulating data to achieve the desired result, you should get in touch!

In all of this we recognise that a database is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself. And if you are going to derive real, tangible benefits from a database, it has to be right: in the right environment/format, with the right structure, available at the right time, to the right people. Get all these things right and your data will be infinitely more valuable; get any of them wrong and the value of your data is diminished. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

If your data is presently held in an outmoded or unsuitable environment then you may already have found that information retrieval is not as straightforward as you would like. Similarly, if the format in which your data is held is inflexible, this will hinder your ability to add or import data into, or export or retrieve data from, your database. We can migrate your data to a more modern and powerful environment that will make it easier to get both raw data in — with all the necessary validation and categorisation, and data extracts out — in a fashion that makes the results easy to use.

Whether or not how your data is currently held is OK, the database structure may not be. This may be as simple as insufficient digits in certain fields (remember the Year 2000 problem?) or a more fundamental rework may be required, with each record needing to be reformatted, and possibly the retrospective gathering of information to ‘back-fill’ newly-created fields. The structure may also need to be rationalised eg. having the post town in a dedicated field. Or perhaps the structure is fine, and the data just needs to be checked for ‘integrity’ eg. geographically, ensuring the locality and postcode are matched, or even just identifying and purging duplicate records.

In a fast-moving world, timeliness is everything. If you make updates to your database in batches then don’t be surprised when (not if!) you come to undertake a mailing, distribution or analysis only to find that your data is out-of-date. We believe that amendments should be made as they arise, ensuring data is in a permanent state of readiness. If this is your problem, and you don’t have the resources in-house to make data amendments in a timely fashion (perhaps because too many come at once eg. at certain times of the year), we can help.

Giving people access to data is one of the most crucial concerns that we encounter. There is nothing more frustrating for users than to be told that their data is unavailable, or it is not available in the format they require, or it can only be accessed from company premises whereas they need it off-site eg. at a conference or exhibition, or when working from home. This can often best be solved by modifying how your data is made available, to give selected users 24/7 access, with secure login for sensitive data. We call all of this WWW; ie. Whatever data you need, Whenever and Wherever you need it.

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