There are so many reasons why documenting your data management processes are so critical to long-term success, but one of the most important reasons is to ensure we process data consistently over time. This is especially true for processes that occur repeatedly but very infrequently.

For example, a client of mine publishes a print magazine three times per year, and sells advertising for all three issues. The majority of ad sales occur in the 60 days prior to publication of each issue, which means that for six months out of the year, they are processing few if any advertising orders.

Yet they need to process these orders in the same manner throughout the year, in order to accurately report on their ad sales. And so documentation that walks the staff person through how to process an advertising order is required, in order to ensure the orders are processed the same way, every time.

Over my 25 years of consulting I've found these types of scenarios (processes that occur repeatedly but very infrequently) are usually the greatest source of bad, messy, or nonexistent data.

One of the very first articles I ever wrote (published by ASAE) was about the importance of documentation (published in 2000, you can read it here). Some things never change. Documentation IS king.