[The Course]
Quality of data is considered to be high in case its nature and structure fits for its presupposed usage in making decisions, performing different operations and planning future activities. Data can also be treated as of high-quality in case it adequately represents the real-world processes to which it is linked. Data quality also means that data storage corresponds to the principles of data consistency, validity, timeliness, accuracy and completeness. Following these principles allows to use the data in appropriate way (Redman 56).
There are numerous advantages of high-quality data management. A major widely recognized benefit of improving data quality is the reduction of costs. For instance, if company’s internal data is managed in a proper way it allows the business to save on accountancy costs. Having customer records in one place as well as unification of data storage standards creates an ability to consolidate all essential data in one system, which leads to increased efficiency of the business. If we talk about marketing costs, high-quality data is also very important here, because it lets managers not to spend money on promoting products and services for the people who are not interested in company’s brands. Finally, improving data quality allows to significantly reduce a number of errors during information processing and consequent rectification of these errors.
Alongside with costs reduction using the best practices in data quality management is one of the key factors of increasing sales volume. Data with better quality enables selling additional peace of product or service to existing customer, because business is already aware of his or her needs. All this creates improved customer relationship management (CRM), which eventually leads to introduce such useful features as customer profiling, increased response rate to company’s products and improved algorithms of customers’ retention. During new products launch well-prepared data about the situation in the market certainly leads to the success of initial product promotion to the market.
As for customers’ loyalty, high-quality data is also a key to success. Knowing the customer allows companies to increase personalization of provided products and services, decrease delivering unnecessary and duplicating information to the clients and eventually protect brand’s reputation (“Data Management Dynamics: The ROI from Data Quality”).
Organization of high-quality information storage, its transfer between people and algorithms of its optimal usage is impossible without implementing so called Management information system (MIS). MIS is actually an area of science focused on managing information systems in order to ensure optimal information exchange as well as effectiveness of making strategic decisions. Management information system architecture can be different depending on the real-world cases but usually it includes such components as the system of decision support, expert opinion system, transaction processing system and executive information system.
Just like in case with the high level of data quality management, MIS usage also has significant benefits. First of all, business becomes able to precisely detect its strengths and weaknesses, because thank to MIS it has all necessary aggregated data relating to company revenue sources, human resources management, optimality of assets usage etc. All these pieces of data allow to see an overall picture of the situation in which company is now. If installed properly, MIS becomes a great tool of communication between different departments of the business and particular employees. The availability of the data received from customers in form of their feedback is an important prerequisite in optimizing corporate business processes in order to meet the clients’ demands.
Ultimately MIS usage becomes one of the company’s main competitive advantages, because it enables the enterprise to grow faster, make its products and services cheaper while keeping their quality at the same high level. And as a result company becomes able to provide the market with a set of unique offers available only in this particular business (Pant and Hsu).
The key component of any information system is the method of data storage and usage. These tasks are solved using databases. The database definition is quite simple: in fact, it is just well-organized data collection. In a broader view database is a set of tables, reports, queries, views, all of which are targeted on the optimization of the disk space needed for data storage as well as minimization of network bandwidth essential for a proper database functioning.
Any database consists of a number of objects like fields, records and tables. All of these objects make a database structure. Field is a single piece of information such as city, customer’s birth date, customer’s e-mail, the outlet name etc. Record stands higher in this hierarchy and means a set of separate fields. For instance, we have a record for one particular client. This record usually consists of such informative fields as his or her first and last name, his sex, marital status, city of residence, date of birth, some custom metrics, like client’s balance amount in the bank, the sum of latest transaction etc. Finally, a table is a set of different records. The table connected to the example mentioned above could be named as “Clients” and consist, for example, of 15 records, each of which would correspond with a real-world person dealing with this real-world company.
One of the most widespread types of databases is relational database. It is based on so called relation model and consists of the following components: primary keys, foreign keys, relationships, cardinality etc.
Like any other database, relational database consists of tables with data. In case of relational database tables are called “relations”. Each record in the table has a unique key. Such key helps linking information in the current table to the information in other tables. The main table with information about records (for example, table “Clients”) contains a primary key, to which other tables can establish links. In order to set up link to the abovementioned table, the field (column) is created in another table, which contains a value of the key from the main table. In this situation the information about the key is called “foreign key”. Unlike primary key, foreign key doesn’t have to be unique, because several records in the table can refer to the same record in other table, where this key becomes primary and has to be unique.
Two different tables can be linked in two different ways: “one-to-many” and “many-to-many”. Such matching between the tables is called a cardinality of one table in relation to another one. For example, we can consider a database designed to track information about the company sales. It has the table “Sales Managers” containing records about the sales managers dealing with the clients, the table “Clients” with all necessary information about the clients and the “Orders” table with information about the orders made by customers. The cardinality between “Sales Managers” table and “Orders” table as well as between “Clients” table and “Orders” table is “one-to-many” type, because any given client or salesperson can be connected to a lot of orders. At the same time, cardinality between “Sales Managers” and “Clients” tables is “many-to-many” because any single sales managers can have a lot of clients and vice versa: any give client could make orders with different sales managers.
One the most popular and widespread database management systems (DBMS) is Microsoft Access, which is an integral part of Microsoft Office package. Microsoft Access combines the database engine and convenient graphical user interface as well as a number of software development tools capable of managing databases.
The data model implemented in Microsoft Access contains of the four main objects: tables, forms, objects and reports. Just like mentioned before in the description of the relational database, table in MS Access is the information storage consisting of records (rows) and fields (columns). The principle of data organization in MS Access doesn’t differ from the general principles established in relational databases.
Forms in MS Access are designed in order to be able to easily view information which is already stored in the table. As table can contain hundreds and thousands of rows, it is not always comfortable to see the whole table in one screen. Form is a method of viewing and generally using only those pieces of data in the particular table, which are important in current situation.
If the user needs to view only necessary data from multiple tables, he or she uses MS Access queries. The queries allow to get only necessary filtered information, which can be situated in the different tables of the database. For example, database contains very detailed information about millions of company’s clients, who live in a lot of places in the country. Query allows to choose only specifics customers living in a chosen state or city, who have made orders only for the last 3 weeks. The result of query execution is a new table, which can also be viewed with forms functionality. And what is also important, modifying query doesn’t influence the source information in the tables in any way.
Finally, reports are a very powerful functionality of MS Access, which allows the users to generate a variety of any types of lists, calculations and data aggregations needed to present data in a specific form, which is needed for a particular situation of data usage (Smothers).
MS Access has two modes of viewing the database: the Datasheet View and the Design View. Datasheet View allows the user to see the source information in the database. Using Datasheet view enables to enter new data as well as edit and remove existing data. It does not offer functionality of changing database general format.
Database configuration is done in Design View. It allows to create the new table, edit the structure and settings of existing ones, establish relations between the tables. Primary and foreign keys are also set up here. There’s also a possibility of restricting the value possible to enter into the table. From the other side, the data itself can’t be changed here, only structure of database can be modified.
It is impossible to use just one view mode. In order to create appropriate database the user has to switch between the two modes.
The database structure needed for generation of the receipt is presented in fig. 1.
Figure 1. The database structure for receipt generation.
Works Cited
“Data Management Dynamics: The ROI from Data Quality.” Oracle. Oracle, Feb. 2006. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.
Redman, Thomas C. Data Driven: Profiting from Your Most Important Business Asset. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008. Print.
Pant, Somendra, Hsu, Cheng. “Strategic Information Systems Planning: A Review.” Information Resources Management Association International Conference, May 21–24, Atlanta. Atlanta. May 1995. Web.
Smothers, Curt. “MS Access Database Objects.” Bright Hub. Bright Hub, 21 Dec. 2009. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.
