12 Reasons Why Data Is Important

If you work in the human services sector, termssuch as “data”, “quantitative analysis” or “pivot table”they can sound scary. Don’t be intimidated. The datathey do not have to be complicated, they are useful information to becollects to support processes such as decision making, orthe organization’s strategy.

The following list shares twelve reasons why datathey are important, what you can do with them, and how they relate to human services administration work.

1. Make informed decisions

Data = knowledge. Good data provides evidence indisputable, while anecdotal evidence, guesswork, or abstract observation could lead to wasted resources due to taking action based on an incorrect conclusion.

2. Prevent hills from becoming mountains

Data enables monitoring of the health of critical organizational systems: By using data for quality monitoring, organizations are able to respond to challenges before they become crises. A Effective quality monitoring will enable your organization to be proactive instead of reactive and to maintain best practices over time. measure the effectiveness of a certain

3. Get the desired results

Data enables organizations measure the effectiveness of a certain strategy: When strategies are put in place to overcome a challenge, collecting data will allow you to determine the performance of your solution and if you need to adjust or change your approach in the long run term.

4. Find solutions to problems

Data enables organizations more effectively determine the cause of problems. The data allows organizations visualize the relationships between what happens in different places, departments and systems. If the number of medication errors has increased,

5. Support your arguments

Data is a key component for the defense of systems. The use of data will help make a strong case for the change in internal processes, through the use of data will allow you to demonstrate why they are changes necessary

6. Stop playing the guessing game

The data will help you explain (both the good as bad) decisions to stakeholders. Whether your strategies and decisions have the positive result, or not, of this way you will develop an approach based on conjecture, but on solid data.

7. Be strategic in your approaches

Data increases efficiency. Effective data collection and analysis will allow you to direct scarce resources toward where they are most needed. If a increase in signiÞcant incidents in a particular service area, this data can be further analyzed to determine whether the increase is generalized or isolated in a specific place. If the problem is isolated, training, staff or other resources can be deployed precisely where they are needed, instead of all over the world system. The data will also help

8. Know what you are doing right

The data allows you to reproduce the strong areas of your organization. Data analytics will help to identify programs, service areas, and high-performing people. Once high-performing programs have been identiÞed, you can study them to develop strategies that help to the programs, service areas and people of low performance.

9. Keep track of everything

Good data enables organizations establish baselines, benchmarks, and goals to move forward. As the data allow you to measure, you can establish baselines, find benchmarks and set performance goals performance. A baseline is what a determined area before applying a solution concrete. Benchmarks set at where others are in a demographic similar, such as the national data of Personnel Outcome Measures®. data collection will enable your organization to set performance goals performance and celebrate your successes when you achieve them.

10. Make the most of the budget

Financing is increasingly based on the results and the data. With the change of erl Financing System that is based in the services provided at the time of Financing that is based on results obtained, it is increasingly important that organizations apply evidence-based practices and develop systems to collect and analyze data.

11. Access the resources around you

Your organization likely already has most of the data and expertise it needs to start the analysis. Your Human Resources OfÞce probably already keeping track of data relating to your staff. You are probably already reporting incident data to your state enforcement agency. supervision. probably have at least a person in your organization who has Excel experience. But if you don’t none of these things, there is still hope! There are many free resources on online that can help you get started. Search on the web “how to analyze data” or “how to make a chart in Excel”.

12. Improving People’s Lives

Data will help you improve quality life of the people it supports: The Quality improvement is the first and foremost reason why organizations should use data. By enabling you to measure and act, a data system eÞcaz can allow your organization improve the quality of life of all company personnel.