Emily Clarke

How to Increase Data Documentation Productivity

Data documentation is an important, albeit frustrating, part of data analysis. The process ensures that data is easily understood and accessible to others. For companies dealing with troves of data that go through multiple people, it also makes the information more reliable. Data documentation can reduce errors and inconsistencies, ensuring whoever views it understands its provenance.

But there's just one issue: Documentation is a labor-intensive process. Your teams can spend hours ingesting schema and metadata. Even recording quick changes in metadata eats valuable time, killing productivity.

Fortunately, there are ways to increase productivity and remove the hassle of traditional documentation.

Taking Advantage of Automation

One of the best things you can do for your company is invest in a data automation solution to do the heavy lifting. The biggest issue with old-school documentation methods is that they require manual attention. For every piece of data someone views and alters, documentation tasks exist.

Those tasks may seem menial at first, but the time it takes to record changes in metadata adds up. It makes the workflow come to a grinding halt, dramatically lowering productivity without addressing the inconsistency issues.

Automation solves those problems, saving time and capacity.

A solid data automation solution leaves the documentation work to powerful software. Automation tools can perform many documentation tasks, like tagging personally identifiable information (PII), ingesting schema, etc. Implementation automates workflows, allowing your teams to spend more time doing data analysis and less time completing menial tasks.

Automation can automatically record changes, making tracking your data's history easier than ever. Teams can quickly see when data was created, when it changed, who performed those changes and more. There's no way to "forget" documentation tasks. As a result, your data becomes more accurate.

You create a single source of truth for your company, allowing you to resolve any issues that arise while ensuring everyone is always working with the same information.

Not only does automation boost productivity, but it can help businesses scale with growing needs. Because automation tools do the heavy lifting, you don't have to hire dedicated teams or waste resources. Instead, you can focus on growth.

Author Resource:-

Emily Clarke writes about the best data catalog tools and data analysis softwares. You can find her thoughts at data tools blog.