Test data management for retail and manufacturing

How can Grid-Tools help provision non-production data for retail and manufacturing companies?

In the fiercely competitive retail sector, obtaining and effectively utilising customer and commercial data is the key to success. As the industry evolves towards cash-free transactions, online shopping and increasingly targeted marketing, a ‘data trail’ begins to emerge. This ‘trail’ can be advantageous to any retailer, especially if it can be integrated into a single, efficient database. However, it can also prove problematic to meeting high regulatory compliance standards. In a customer-based sector, this consideration is absolutely vital. This is why many retailers are now looking for solutions that allow them to maximise the commercial power of this data, whilst maintaining its compliance.

Grid-Tools has experience in working with retailers across the world to increase operational efficiency and maintain regulatory compliance on development projects. Using a range of niche, unique solutions, Grid Tools are able to help government departments and agencies deliver:

  • Full compliance with national and international data protection standards
  • High quality, re-usable synthetic test data
  • Efficient and easy-to-use test data management solutions and software
  • Testing and development strategies for increased short and long-term efficiency

Creating usable and compliant test data for the retail and manufacturing sectors

In order to run a successful, compliant development project, it is vital to provision high-quality test data. However, current regulations mean that using ‘live’ data in a non-production environment is no longer acceptable. Therefore, forward-thinking retailers have begun to start re-evaluating the way in which they provision their test data for development projects to comply with this standard.

In the past, data masking has been seen as an adequate method for de-identifying production data for testing. However, it fails to sufficiently meet the needs of modern retailers; their databases contain too much Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and commercially sensitive data. Masking such large and complex amounts of data in a non-production is also inefficient, and runs the risk of compromising relational integrity. So, how then, do we provision useful and compliant test data?

The answer is synthetic data creation! Grid Tools offer a range of sophisticated, flexible solutions, including the award-winning Datamaker™, which can create data that models the referential and relational integrity of production environments from scratch! For more on how your organisation should be using synthetic data creation for full compliance in development projects, follow the link.

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