The other day I was working with a Customer in Support. Their MAX system was running slowly and they weren’t sure why. The Cost Roll and From To Report in particular were creeping along. They wondered if the entire system had an issue. Then the Customer asked me if the slow-down could be due to the 1 million records in their database… and I knew we had our answer. We talked about purging some data, but what about data that may be needed again in the future?
We discussed Purge and Archive, which allows a company to purge old data and have it available for viewing in another archive database at any time. It makes sense that we would use this approach to cleaning up and organizing a business system. It occurred to me that we do the same thing in our personal lives.
Our own personal environment and health are important to us. Traditionally we clean our houses in the spring. We take the time to go through the things we have in our life and organize them, donate them or trash them. (This can also be done with people!) There are those certain sentimental items that we don’t want in our face, but want to keep near and dear to us. I am particularly fond of bizarre things like old recipes, letters and yards of cloth I have acquired. I organize them in a box and put the marked box in an out-of-the-way but easily accessed place; I archive these things. Now the clutter is gone and I can move about and find things more easily in my daily life. The same can be applied to business systems. When unnecessary data is out of the way, you free up your system and can still access historic records when you'd like.
We clean up our houses by getting rid of the old. We clean up our health by dieting, exercising and cleansing. We even participate in temporary cleansing exercises like Lent, Ramadan or New Year’s Resolutions. All of these exercises give us the chance to simplify and clarify our lives. It is through the process of "cleaning up", that you learn what's important, what's not important and what works for you.
Business systems are the same way. The process of deciding what to Purge and Archive can be a clarifying exercise in itself. It forces you to answer questions like:
- Which data is relevant to my most immediate business goals and which data is noise?
- How are redundancies handled?
- How far back do customer records need to extend?
Spring is a time for cleaning - and not just cleaning house. If you're a MAX Customer, you can always give your Account Manager a call for assistance with Archive Manager or a Business System Review to refresh your operations.
