Data is the backbone of every organization; simply put, without data, a company’s present and future will fall to pieces, and every organization will eventually end up taking wrong decisions with incorrect data. Data cleansing, as a process, caters to spotting and rectifying the inaccuracies within stored data, so that the inaccuracies are weeded out during the analysis stage.
In order to maintain the accuracy of decisions, well validated data, and back it up by solid strategic decisions it’s important to be able to have the right data at hand. However, if the data is corrupt, then chances are the strategies will be skewed and will end up in incorrect decisions for the organizations.
Keeping the intensity and the need to have the right data for the top management, it’s important to understand the need for data cleaning. Here is a list of reasons which clearly highlight the need to have an error free database:
1) Improving customer acquisition: Enterprises can go a long way in boosting their customer acquisition efforts as the right points of contact are available at the time of marketing. Throughout the entire marketing processes, organizations need to follow best data cleansing procedures to ensure the data quality is up to date, and meet the required standards. Another added advantage of clean data is that the potential hits on email and postal campaigns will be maximized, and chances of outdated addresses will be negligible.
2) Develop decision making processes: Many enterprises fail to understand the value of data quality management. Many organizations don’t have a record of the last date of quality control performed on their data. Accurate information is required to take well informed decisions throughout the different strata of an organization’s hierarchy. Clean data facilitates enhanced analytics, and all-round business intelligence which supports decisions on every step. Each strategic decision will help the enterprises meet their organizational goals in the short run and the long run.
3) Restructuring business practices: Data can pertain to the different sectors and verticals within an organization. HR data can help organizations to make the right hiring decisions, while operational data can help enhance the profits and meet the goals of the companies. Strategic data can be used to beat the competition in the market, and help streamline the business. Data on all levels can help a lot of business related needs, and enhance the operations of the business.
4) Reduce returned mail: Businesses spend a lot of time and effort in customer segmentation and targeting potential customers. Marketing strategies include the use of emails and postal letters to reach out to these customers. Unclean data can often result in returned emails and postal letters, which not only dent the financial budgets, but also create a negative reputation for the companies. So it becomes utmost important for companies to collect the right credentials at the time of using any marketing channels, in order to avoid unnecessary costs, and reduce excessive overheads costs. This could be a challenge for most organizations and regular data cleansing activity could help them solve this problem to certain extend.
5) Increase revenues: At the end it is imperative to say that every business works for revenues and added profits. If customers are correctly segmented and targeted, chances are that the revenues will also be increased manifold. The idea is to be able to reach out to the right type of customers, who will become loyal customers of a business, and make repetitive purchases of the business’ goods and services. With all this said and done, the marketing channels largely depend on the quality of the data, and working on unclean, corrupt data can skew the marketing efforts and yield no results in the long run.
The final word:
Considering all the above points, the need to have clean, user friendly data is evident. For this very purpose, businesses and organizations alike should strive to get error free data, in order to ensure that the efforts yield appropriate results.
About Melissa
Since 1985, Melissa has specialized in global intelligence solutions to help organizations unlock accurate data for a more compelling customer view. For more information on eKYC and AML please visit www.Melissa.com.
