Small Data, Big Difference: Case Management with ValiDATA
The longest journey starts with a single step, and small data can make a big difference to any organization, however big your goals. But to unlock the power of small data you need the right tools. That’s where ValiDATA, the data management system from Get the Data, comes in. It’s easy to use, so you can start using it straight away; and it’s powerful, so you can start seeing results immediately.
We’ve all heard of “Big Data”, the data that big corporations collect about us, individually and collectively. A huge industry has grown up around the collection and analysis of these data. Legions of data scientists, coders, marketing strategists, and psychologists use the power of increasingly arcane algorithms to wring ever more information out of these vast data sets. These algorithms work in the background to track our behaviors, measure sales, and make predictions about individuals, communities, and even entire countries. From a commercial perspective, these Big Data are used to improve business outcomes, harness resources more efficiently, and ultimately increase revenues.
But what about small data?
What I mean by “small data” is data that are accessible, informative and actionable. Small organizations need small data to plan projects and monitor outcomes, to show the impact of those projects, and to advocate their cause to funders and policy makers. Small data are the data your organization use every day.
There are plenty of proprietary systems available that claim to help small organizations to manage small data, but these systems can be expensive, cumbersome, lacking in functionality. They can often require additional staff training, so adding to costs and taking staff away from other work.
These tools can even be too sophisticated for the more modest data demands of the CEO of a small organization. My colleague Jack Cattell says that many of these systems are “a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, but you don’t have the strength to lift the sledgehammer!”
Introducing ValiDATA
ValiDATA by Get the Data is a data management system which allows your organization to unlock the potential of small data.
I am a strong believer in the move to democratize data collection and analyses, and ValiDATA is our contribution to the democratization of data. Instead of locking your data into a costly and hard-to-use proprietary system, ValiDATA puts your organization’s data back in your hands.
But this isn’t about the types of services used by big corporations, with their outsize collection systems pulling in vast amounts of anonymous data, their ranks of analysts, and their opaque algorithms. It’s about giving small organizations easy-to-use tools to translate their data into something usable, allowing them to monitor outcomes and to measure the impact they are having on individuals and communities.
GtD’s ValiDATA tool is a cost effective data management system that allows users to track client journeys by monitoring the programs or interventions they receive, and to see the outcomes they achieve. ValiDATA also gives managers the tools to create back-end reports that can be used to report overall progress to staff, boards, and funders.
But ValiDATA is more than a data management tool, it can also serve as the basis for our clients’ social impact journey using our data collection and analytics packages, from Measure to Learn to Prove. Providing a cost-effective solution to collecting and analysing data, ValiDATA can be used with any one of our individual packages, and it can seamlessly integrate analyses across all three.
With ValiDATA your organization can start monitoring outcomes, predicting progress, and measuring impact from day one.
ValiDATA lets you harness the power of “small data” to make a big difference.
At Get the Data we’re passionate about helping you to get the most from your data. If you would like to learn more about how ValiDATA can help your organization to monitor services, measure impact, and improve outcomes, or if you want to know more about the services that Get the Data offers, then please contact either Alan or Jack or visit getthedata.net/contact.
