Ensuring Data Archiving Success With TJC Group

⇨ Many organizations often struggle to successfully execute data archival projects.

⇨ Before starting a data archival project, companies should lay out a specific goal and have measurable targets in mind.

⇨ IT teams should communicate with team leaders to achieve buy-in for archival projects throughout the company.

Data is essential for any modern business. Organizations need clean and harmonized data so they can provide real-time information to their users, partners, and customers. However, data archiving is often a major pain point.

Data archiving is the fastest-growing solutions for enterprises relying on SAP. According to the SAPinsider SAP Data Management Strategies Research Report, the number of respondents using data archival solutions increased from 15% in 2022 to 35% in 2023. This leap demonstrates that organizations are becoming increasingly aware that archiving data properly is a mission-critical function.

Many companies may not have sound archiving practices in place. This can not only make business operations and gaining insights more difficult but means that these organizations may not meet governmental and industry regulatory standards for data management. This can also saddle organizations with technical debt and significant costs associated with storing the massive amounts of data they create.

Why Data Archiving Projects Can Fail

To help companies address some of the main issues that come with major data archiving projects, the SAP data experts at TJC Group laid out five main reasons why data archiving projects fail. They also offered insights into how data managers can avoid these pitfalls.

1. Lack of clear objectives

Companies should lay out a specific goal or goals they want to accomplish when beginning a data archiving project – bearing in mind that archiving data is not a goal in and of itself. As part of the objective, companies should also have specific targets in mind, like a percentage reduction in the total size of a database.

Organizations undergoing data archiving projects should also consider how their archived data will be readable and accessible in the future, in the case of an audit or tax purposes.

2. IT departments treating the project as a business initiative

Often, IT leaders will position data archiving projects as a business objective. This may raise questions and draw objections from other business leaders. Generally, IT teams can achieve better results if they frame the project as a technical priority instead.

In the post, Olivier Simonet, VP of Marketing and Sales at TJC Group wrote that if IT leaders can “make the business users confident that their data will always be accessible if needed in the future, this removes any buy-in issues and objections.”

3. Lack of communication between the IT department and business users

IT and business teams often have different goals that can be at odds. Users outside of the IT team may be hesitant to delete or archive data. They can be worried about losing intellectual property or other important information they need for their job functions.

IT teams should include other members of the enterprise throughout the process to ensure that a successful data archiving project is a shared goal. Organizations can also utilize intermediaries like TJC Group to communicate the shared goals and benefits of such projects to all different stakeholders.

4. Data hoarding tendencies

Many individuals and organizations at large qualify as data hoarders – entities that hang on to data they do not really need out of fear that they may need it one day. The concern that someone may be mistakenly deleting something that will be vital later on is an understandable one.

Experienced data managers should be able to demonstrate that others will be able to access archived data and eventually delete it once they know it will not be necessary in the future. This can increase buy-in to data archival projects and make the initiative run more smoothly.

5. Difficulty identifying the data owners

As employees turn over and companies get acquired, the owner of any particular data set can become difficult to identify. Working to identify each individual owner can be difficult and time consuming, especially when some of those owners may not be fully bought in to the data archival project.

To aid in the identification process, IT practitioners may choose to work directly with team leaders. This can streamline the process while allowing team leaders to share concerns on behalf of their teams. By having team leads on board, the project becomes more of a priority for all teams.

For more information on data archival and how to improve the impact of these projects, readers can visit the TJC Group website.