Five questions to ask before you unify your data
A short checklist to work through before you bring your data sources together, so the result is trusted and actually gets used.
Bringing data together is rarely a technology problem alone. Most of the difficulty is agreeing what the data means and who relies on it. These five questions help you find the hard parts early.
1. Which questions should the data answer?
Start from decisions, not databases. Write down the five questions your team asks most often. They tell you which sources matter first, and which can wait.
2. Where does each number come from?
For every important figure, name the system it comes from. When two sources disagree, you need to know which one is the record of truth before you combine them.
3. Who owns each definition?
Words like “customer”, “active” or “revenue” often mean different things in different teams. Agree on one definition for each, write it down, and give it an owner who can approve changes.
4. How fresh does the data need to be?
Some decisions need numbers from this minute, others only need last month. Matching freshness to the decision keeps the work simple and the costs sensible.
5. How will you know it is right?
Decide how you will check quality before you need to. Simple checks, such as totals that match the source and no unexpected gaps, catch most problems early.
Putting it together
If you can answer these five questions, you have most of what you need to plan a unified view that people trust. If you would like to talk it through, get in touch.