According to a recent SiriusDecisions Research Brief, 10-25 percent of the records for the average B2B company contain critical errors. The same study reports that 66% more revenue goes to the company with high quality data management.
So, why does good data make such a difference?
Bad data hurts your image, your operations, and your bottom line – and just gets worse over time.
- It means more returned mail and redundant processes, reduced access to postal discounts, and greater susceptibility to fraud.
- It limits service quality, and that causes lower rates of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- It impacts so many businesses and business areas from insurance to financial services; telco to utilities; public and private companies. What’s more, departments within these businesses – from customer service, sales and marketing; to billing and resource planning; to sales-force automation – are all data-reliant.
Companies today, however, are making marked improvements in data quality. Data Governance – an exercise of people, process and tools, typically a committee that represents every level of the organization, defines clear standards for data management, security and use – and Data Stewardship, an expanding role that ensures the business rules set up by the Data Governance committee data are enforced – play important parts in a four-step process that improves both data quality and data usage.
1 – Access and integrate: All too often data is kept in a different database in every department – you want everyone across your organization to be, literally, on the same page.
2 – Profile and Monitor: Assess where you are, analyze your data and pinpoint issues. Determine what you have, where it’s coming from, and how it does-and doesn’t-work in concert. As part of this assessment, determine where you can enhance your approach to Data Governance, and set firm rules and requirements going forward.
3 – Remediate: Clean up your data. Validate it. Standardize it. Match and de-dupe it. Enrich it with spatial, credit and/or marketing data that will enable your organization to use it better.
4 – Deliver/Federate: Empower your Data Governance Committee, specifically your data stewards to advocates proper collection, management and use of data. First ensure it is fit for use, then ensure it used as intended.
With the new modular tools out there today that work across platforms and address each and every one of these steps in an integrated fashion, getting to better data quality is certainly getting easier.
What steps are you taking to improve your data quality – and your bottom line? Comments and questions welcome.
Great article!! You hit the nail on the head. Data is truly the core of every business and the higher the quaulity of data, the more efficient the company…bottom line. I think this holds true especially for your marketing efforts. Imagine spending $20,000 on a direct mail campain or an e-mail campaign only to have half undeliverable due to bad addresses. Keep your data updated!