This election week has illustrated many themes, but one that sticks out given the current state of affairs is that validating election results should be more streamlined than it is today. The sheer nature of human error causes doubts in many people’s minds whether validated or not. This holds true as well with data validation when it comes to benchmarking, surveying or any type of data collection your association is involved in.
In the past, and quite frankly still today, associations collected data and then manually manipulated it on the back end to produce results. This takes hours of time and money to get the final product in presentable report mode. It also opens your association up to the liability that often comes when you “touch” raw data. There’s the question of trying to rationalize what is good data? What data points are outliers and shouldn’t be included in the totals? Did we calculate this total accurately? Did we miss a line in our spreadsheet? Not to mention the huge liability of security when we import that “raw” disaggregated data to company or consultants’ laptops. What if it gets stolen or hacked?
There is no denying that the more secure way to collect and report on the data is with automated software that takes the human element out of determining what is good data and what is bad data. It’s also best practice to setup your reports on the front end so that once the data is in, there is no need to touch it to create your reports. By implementing this method, your association’s management team is putting your members’ interests first by protecting their data and allowing for faster reporting which leads to faster decision making. It’s not good enough today to just deliver a benchmarking report or survey report. You must think and consider the manner and tools you are using to collect the data to protect the integrity of your reporting process and the security of your members’ data.
Dynamic Benchmarking has created the toolset that allows your association to implement benchmarking where data validation is streamlined and secure. We take the human error element out of the equation.
