They say that the two happiest days of a man’s life are the day he buys his first boat, and the day he sells it. The intention is to spend days and weekends on the water, fishing, and taking in the sun, but in reality, boating is a very expensive hobby. There is the upfront cost, berthing fees, insurance, and maintenance. The ideal of “a stitch in time saves nine,” is that fixing a problem can prevent it from being a very large problem if it goes unattended to. If you keep up with routine maintenance such as washing the boat down after each use and covering it, then it will save you in the long run. The same goes for your data. If you enter correct and complete data, then it saves you from the expense of a huge capital data cleansing project many years down the line.
Best Practices to Data Entry
A proactive approach to enter clean data will prevent huge issues later. All parties involved need to stringently be on board with setting standards for data entry and following them. Suppliers and EPC’s should have the ability to validate and prepopulate bulk data as it is entered into the system. For certain types of data, there should be mandatory fields. The problem with incomplete data entries is that the gaps in information may only be noticed years later when the suppliers have either moved on, or data is archived. Data should be correct and complete prior to being loaded into the CMMS. Not only may incorrect data not be accepted into the CMMS, but it is also harder to find and fix once in the CMMS. The alternative is undertaking a very costly capital project to either standardize or cleanse data. Proactively entering quality data is a much more efficient option than retrospectively trying to fix the problem.
What can you do?
“A stitch in time saves nine.” “One year’s seeds, 7 year’s weeds.” “Procrastination is the thief of time.” The point is, we’ve all heard the sayings, but do we realize the brutal reality before it’s too late? Following corporate or legislative data entry standards should not be difficult. The NRX Supplier Portal is a useful tool to help with the management of data entry and the automation of data input standardization. All parties involved will have their own role from entering the data to its approval and CMMS upload. Data can be entered in bulk by suppliers and contractors from several sources, according to specific corporate standards. Reviewers and approvers will have an automated process to check the data quickly and can work with suppliers and contractors to improve the quality of the data entered to the CMMS. When data quality is high in the CMMS, the full value of the CMMS system can be realized, including improved uptime, safety, and ROI.
Please reach out to our data quality experts if you want to learn more, and check out our previous blog on Improving Spare Parts Management.
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