Mr.Khay

3 Tools for Managing Data at No Costs

Data Management is argued to firmly support the organizational learning. Learning organization relies on the knowledge management to innovate products and services to gain competitive edges over the rivals. Research has confirmed that the more effective knowledge management, the more innovative for competitive advantages. Managing knowledge is to turn the learning results of individual, team and organization to data which can be accessed and reused by the individual and teams for ideation and decision-making. For the importance of effective knowledge management, organization needs to properly record the knowledge as the product of learning of individual, team and the organization per se, in the database system for sharing and reusing in the robust cycle of work. Since knowledge can be tacit and implicit, it poses a challenge for filling the database with unnecessary and invaluable data which will complicate the data reusing and assessment. Therefore, it is recommended for the organization to design a knowledge management channel which identify the way knowledge flows and how to filter the valuable knowledge for organizational needs. 

Database management is another systematic way of recording and retaining the data for reusing. Since organization, not to mention their different departments and units, has a lot of data for communication, including irrelevant ones, they needs a database system to manage the overwhelming data for effective work communication. When we sneak about data, it also comes in a variety of forms - text, image, Multimedia, sounds... Then the organization needs a robust database system which can effectively handle all forms of data for recording and accessing. For a caution, Multimedia data such as video file and image consumes more storage space to put a burden on database system. In the current database technology, there are three ways the organization can set up their database system. The first one is offline and on-site database server, where computer servers with high valume of storage / Hard Disk drives are installed as the mainframe computer to record, retain and to retrieve for reusing. The second mode of database system is on-site and cloud-based data servers. This mode enables the data to be safely stored and secured by cloud server by giant cloud server company, namely Google Workspace, Amazon Web Services, Alibaba and so forth. Moreover, the organization still needs to install the computer servers as the mainframe for data communication but no requirement of high volume data storages / Hard Disk Drive. For the third mode, organization can consider web-based database system which all the configuration is on the world wide web and stored in the cloud servers. This approach is more convenient for data management and the configuration. However, there is a disadvantage that the whole database is not in the hand of organization but with the database developer company. Outsourcing the database developer company is advantageous when the organization lacks of specialized database developer staff to design, debug and maintain the database. Hosting the web-based database also requires skills in configuring the cloud server provider to launch the database application. In all, there are advantages and disadvantages of these three modes for managing database and the organization will explore and recommend the most effective mode based on their financial and knowledge circumstances. 

There is still a good venue for database to be managed at lower cost (efficiency) and yields favorable results (effectiveness), albeit less dynamic and robust functions. I would recommend three key tools for designing a web-based database platform at lower cost. The truth is database has three core elements - the storage of data (storage server), the data inputs or records and the accessibility. The first element (storage server) can be built with Google Drive, using the Google Cloud server, as a data storage. Google Drive, though limited with allocated storage capacity, can be increased with costs. It is also rather a wise move if the organization can make use of the YouTube and other multimedia channel to store their multimedia files and by inserting the link to the Google Drive. The second one is Data inputs or records that can be done with ASANA Task Management to link all documents with Google Drive. ASANA platform is free for use and can assign tasks, monitor and evaluate the tasks with unlimited files to upload. To maintain the uniformity, all records of tasks and results must be stored on the Google Drive which we can share the folder or file in the ASANA platform. The third one is accessibility. We can simply share the Google Drive to user by limiting the permission to access the files. However, doing this way will create more complicated file sharing to pop up in the user's Gmail account and their Google Drive. The most recommended tool to use is a blog which is right in the Google Workspace to create a database platform using Google Drive as your data server. Blogger is an application developed by the Google for sharing our posts in the blog style (a mini website) which is more specialized in the field of user. To sum up, there are three key cores of database and three tools which can be used to create the web-based database at lower costs.