Whether you’re in marketing, sales, IT or another business function, you’ll need to have access to reliable, accurate data to inform your decisions. This is where good data management comes into play -and that’s the reason it’s one of the top trends in technology to keep an eye on in 2018.

Data management is a broad term that covers all areas that deal with treating your data as a valuable asset and ensuring its accuracy, reliability and accessibility. This includes everything from data design to the implementation of data and analytics systems to managing the lifecycle of storage of your company’s information.

A well-designed data management strategy includes six primary attributes or fundamental attributes:

Accuracy – the information should reflect real, world objects and events, and be verifiable using trusted sources.

Completeness — the data must contain all necessary values for a use go right here case such as sending a message to a customer only with their last name.

Consistency — the data must remain consistent across all data sets, and remain that way even when updated or modified.

Accessibility — the data should be easily retrievable for those who require it, without compromising compliance requirements.

A data management plan is only efficient when all departments and business units are all on board. This is particularly important because the impact of bad data could be costly for your company. For example an IBM study found that poor data management costs the U.S economy $3.1 trillion each year in lost productivity and costs associated with data maintenance.