33 CHAPTER 4 OPERATIONAL BEST PRACTICES Effective organizations establish clear processes to ensure data is collected and stored in a reliable manner WHEN DATA INPUT IS INACCURATE AND UNORGANISED Bad data Unreliable output WHEN DATA INPUT IS RELIABLE AND COMPREHENSIVE Good data Reliable output There can be a lot of administrative work required from the employees to consistently and correctly use all the many tools a modern organization has. In sales, for example, if people have to input their sales progress into multiple tools, it is likely that none of the tools' data will be fully comprehensive or accurate. The reason being that salespeople may just want to get the administrative tasks done so they can focus on what they are actually employed to do, sales. Inaccurate data can render it unreliable and potentially worthless. To avoid this, effective organizations typically limit the number of tools they use and ensure that the tools they do use can be used efficiently and correctly. For example, in a sales system, they might make certain fields "required" and validate the data types of inputs. In addition, they establish clear processes and provide education on these processes to ensure that all employees, both new and experienced, know how to use the systems correctly. "The value of data lies in its reliability and comprehensiveness. A key hire for us was therefore a dedicated sales operations person that ensures that our systems are used correctly and consistently." However, administrative tasks are never easy to get right consistently. In these cases, many high-performing organizations hire a specific sales or revenue operations person who is responsible for ensuring that the systems are used correctly and that the data can be relied upon. For some organizations, this key hire can make the difference between data being worthless and data becoming a key driver of the organization's success.