What Does a Data Management Specialist Do?

Data management specialists are professionals who maintain businesses’ data systems so that employees can use recorded data to accomplish organizational objectives or communicate information internally or externally. These types of individuals must be analytical, good at working with computers, and strong at multi-tasking. A person who is interested in becoming a data management specialist typically needs to complete a four-year bachelor’s degree program in an area such as information technology or computer science.

The chief duty of a data management specialist is to organize a company’s data so that the information is easy to retrieve and analyze. For instance, he or she has to design a computer interface — a place where two computer components interact — that separates data into categories and provides them for company officials to use in a simple-to-assess format. Business leaders then use this information to make important organizational decisions, such as whether certain company products are exceeding sales goals and thus must be marketed more.

A person who oversees information at a business has to confirm the accuracy of the organization’s data before putting it into a database, and he or she also must secure it. This is critical because leaders can use only information that is precise and up-to-date for drawing appropriate conclusions that affect the direction of a company. For this reason, a data management specialist should be very detail-oriented. In addition, this type of professional needs to use special computing devices to ensure that the information is protected from access by unauthorized users.

Persons in this career field have to address problems that arise with a company’s data system or computer components and provide related training to employees. They ensure that personnel have updated software and hardware in addition to operating quality tests for computer systems when software or hardware changes must be implemented. He or she also must train employees at a company on how to use the organization’s computer systems to extract the information that they need.

Making sure that the correct types of data are available at a company constitutes a critical data management specialist job duty as well. For instance, if a professional works at a company that operates in the accounting field, he or she needs to ensure that the data necessary to meet industry regulations regarding financial reporting is available. The data management employee also should regularly meet with a company’s officials to see if new types of information need to be tracked and arranged in a computer system for inclusion in business presentations and reports.