How can you maintain resilience when your data management budget is cut?

1 Assess your priorities

The first step to deal with a budget cut is to assess your current data management activities and prioritize them according to their value, impact, and urgency. You may need to revisit your data strategy, align it with your business goals, and identify the most critical data sources, processes, and outputs. You may also need to evaluate the trade-offs between quality, speed, and cost, and decide which aspects of data management are essential, desirable, or optional. By doing this, you can focus your efforts and resources on the most important and relevant data management tasks, and avoid wasting time and money on low-value or redundant ones.

3 Leverage your assets

Another step is to leverage your existing data management assets and maximize their value and utility. You can do this by reusing, repurposing, or sharing data, tools, or skills that you already have, or that are available within your organization or network. For example, you can use data catalogs, metadata, or data dictionaries to find and access existing data sources, or use data lakes, warehouses, or platforms to store and process data in a centralized and standardized way. You can also use open source, free, or low-cost tools, such as R, Python, or Excel, to perform data analysis, visualization, or reporting, or use online courses, webinars, or communities to learn new skills or best practices. By leveraging your assets, you can reduce costs, increase flexibility, and foster collaboration.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?