Business
Hey beautiful audience, how are you? Today, you will discover some really interesting things about analytics, automation, and workflow magic. I’m your host, Maya – an experienced data specialist and tech enthusiast. Today, we are getting real about one of the most painful but necessary parts of data work, especially data cleansing.
Maintaining data hygiene is a huge time sink. You spend hours analysing things but invest zero seconds on fixing inconsistencies, dupes, missing entries, and reformatting dates. It’s like an unending loop of problems. How would you get out of it?
Well, the answer is simple – delegate or outsource it.
But it’s not that super convenient. You can’t just hand over messy data randomly and think for miraculous changes. Today, we’ll share the best and smartest ways in this regard. Simply put, you are going to come across some smart ways to delegate data cleansing effectively so you can proactively control data-driven operations.
Method 1: Create Clear Data Standards
Before you move ahead, it’s a priority to define what data or mistakes you want to clean, and it’s crucial to carefully identify which types of errors, inconsistencies, or formatting issues exist in your datasets so that when delegating data cleaning tasks, everyone involved understands exactly what needs to be addressed, whether it’s removing duplicates, standardizing formats, filling missing values, or correcting mislabeled columns.
Specification is a necessity because diverse people have their own interpretations regarding organised data. Some may have just a standardisation issue, while other’s databases might be infected with duplicates or renamed columns and extra spaces. So, make sure that your requirement is pretty specific, as:
- How you want date formats to look
- Which naming conventions should be used for fields
- What to do with missing values—delete, fill, or flag them
Simply put, you have to work on preparing some guidelines or blueprinting them before delegating this responsibility to an external partner.
Method 2: Use Tools that Automate the Boring Stuff
The next method is the need of the hour. It’s the fact that nobody is going to check gigantic data manually. It’s an insane idea to check thousands of rows and clean dupes or any other mistake.
As multiple tools are available to help you in treating specific problems, like OpenRefine, PowerQuery, or Python libraries like Pandas. You can establish some rules as to what cleanup tasks you need to delegate. Once done, let the external team run scripts or workflows accordingly, but not do it all from scratch.
This hack will save time and also narrow down the scope for errors.
Some smart corporate entities set up a template defining the entire workflow on a cloud-based tool like Google Cloud or Microsoft Office 365. And sometimes, even low-code platforms can make it superfast and convenient. In the cloud, everyone follows the similar process. You can just oversee outputs and what they are doing.
Method 3: Assign Roles Based on Strengths
No two people are alike. Considering this fact, you must learn that some people are great at manual data checkups, whereas others stand out in scripting and automation.
So, you can try these hacks:
- Segment your best talents for quality management, verification, validation, and manual revisions.
- Align your technical folks scripting and building macros for repetitive cleansing stuff.
- Appoint a lead to manage and supervise teams for quality checkup.
These practices keep efficiency high and avoid burnout.
To wrap up, it’s necessary to understand and strictly delegate data cleansing tasks. Do cover structuring, automation, and integrating your team’s strengths to do the job.
So, you can save hours by following these best practices and deliver the best results that everyone likes.
Thanks for tuning in! If you found this episode helpful, subscribe for more bite-sized data strategies. Until next time—keep your data clean and your mind clearer.