The foundation of credit union excellence
In an industry where data is the most valuable asset, data integrity is essential. Building a successful credit union begins with data integrity.
by: Nate Wentzlaff
Credit union data is more abundant than ever. Along with this abundance comes an increased need for data integrity. Databases are constantly being designed with ever-expanding datasets; the integrity of data must be upheld for wise, data-driven decision making. As new applications are being dreamed up by developers within the financial services arena, credit unions are struggling to manage their data that flows throughout their organization. Mobile banking has become one of the biggest disrupting forces by pumping new data types at an alarming rate. If this new data is compromised, all the analytics tools and technologies in the world will not be effective.
3 Types of Data Integrity
- Physical Integrity
Data must be physically safe. Whether data is stored internally (on various servers) or within the cloud, credit unions must firmly establish physical data integrity standards. Disaster recovery, security, server maintenance and other actions must be taken to ensure the physical integrity of data.
- Human Error
Humans make mistakes. Maintaining data integrity is very difficult when humans are inputting free-form text into software systems throughout the credit union. The design of credit union software must be improved to mitigate human error. Drop-down fields, required formats for data input and auto-populated fields are some of the ways credit unions can decrease the volume of erroneous data caused by humans.
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