During the pandemic, I watched a procurement office scramble to pull reports together for auditors. Teams were working late, pulling numbers from one spreadsheet after another, hoping it would all line up.

It wasn’t that people weren’t working hard. They were. The problem was the data—scattered, disconnected, and messy. Every department had its own version of the truth. And when the auditors came calling, leadership and staff had no choice but to stitch it all together at the last minute.

Here’s what struck me most: after the audit was done, nothing changed. The same disconnected systems. The same manual reports. The same stress. Leaders went right back to the old way of doing things. Users went back to late nights with spreadsheets.

And that’s what happens in so many organizations. You survive the crisis, but you don’t fix the system that caused it. Which means the next audit looks exactly like the last one—just as stressful, just as costly.

The Real Cost of Disorganized Data Management

Disorganized data doesn’t just frustrate leaders—it wears down business users too.

• For leaders: Wasted hours second-guessing numbers, shaky credibility in front of boards and auditors, and decisions made without confidence.
• For users: Late nights, repetitive manual work, and the constant pressure of “getting it right” without the right tools.

Nobody wins in that system.

What Proactive Data Management Looks Like in Action

The shift isn’t about adding more work. It’s about making the work easier for everyone:

• Save time by eliminating manual merges.
• Improve accuracy with one source of truth.
• Move away from paper and toward systems built for scale.
• Let technology carry the load so people can focus on thinking, not scrambling.

When leaders commit to proactive systems, business users feel the difference immediately: less stress, fewer fire drills, and more time for real problem-solving.

How to Begin Proactive Data Management in Your Business

If there’s one thing I’d tell both leaders and business users, it’s this: make data cleanup a priority.

Don’t expect overnight results. This is a process. It takes leadership commitment, department-wide buy-in, and honest communication. Everyone needs to understand why the change is happening—and how it makes their daily work easier, not harder.

That’s how you break the cycle of scramble → survive → repeat.

Because at the end of the day, this isn’t a data problem. It’s a clarity problem.