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Design your data solution

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Data is the third pillar of solution design. You need accurate, complete, and relevant data to build a successful solution. With the right data, you can get insights that improve your business intelligence.

This article explains how to plan your data strategy, architecture, migration, integration, and quality for your Dynamics 365 solution.

Data terms

These are the terms you need to know about your data:

  • Master data: This is the static information that you use and exchange in your business activities, such as customer and product details.

  • Transactional records: These are the business information that you create, store, and report as part of your business process, such as customer payments and expense reports.

  • Documents: These are the documents that you create as part of your business process, such as sales orders and customer invoices.

  • Reports: These are the organized or filtered information that serve as input or output for your business activities, such as a trial balance or aged debt.

You must start with an understanding of how you use your data now and how you want to use it in the future. Planning your data strategy upfront also helps you scale your solution.

Data deliverables

These are the key deliverables for your data solution:

  • Data governance strategy
  • Data architecture
  • Data migration and integration strategy
  • Data quality strategy

The world is moving from isolated data to connected enterprise data that enables the digital feedback loop. That's why you need a data strategy that uses artificial intelligence and analytics to make your data actionable. This is critical for the success of your solution design.

To learn more about the different data functions you need before starting a project, see Data management.

Next steps