All companies can understand the significance of maintaining accurate, high-quality data and how it saves them a substantial amount of time and effort when attempting to connect with their consumer base. But unfortunately, even the most strenuous efforts to prevent errors from intruding into an organization's data cannot keep all mistakes and inaccuracies from happening.
Poor data will lead to ineffective outreach and marketing campaigns and create extra labor for staff. That is why organizations are constantly focused on ensuring that they obtain and maintain the most accurate and relevant data. Organizations are investing in more data management tools and resources to ensure that the data is reliable. Our research shows that 92% have invested in data management in the last 12 months
What is data cleansing?
Data cleansing is the process of cleaning and adapting data to fit a required purpose. In more defined terms, data cleansing is the discovery of errors or inconsistencies in a data record and the removal or correction of these mistakes to improve the data quality. Data cleansing can be used to determine incorrect addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.
Data cleansing will provide positive benefits for any company that uses client records or any other significant set of information. The process can be done across any number of records on a recurring schedule or in real-time, depending on what is best suited for your organization.
Why is data cleansing essential?
Ensuring that your data is clean and trustworthy can have positive impacts on the following areas:
- Operational efficiency. Data cleansing helps you improve operational efficiency by removing duplicate records and ensuring all information is accurate. This allows users to find the correct information quickly, which leads to improved customer experience and reduced costs associated with resolving errors or missing data.
- Customer experience. When you are able to communicate information with customers that is beneficial to them faster and more accurately, they're more likely to return in the future and refer your company to their network because of the trust they have in your brand. Implementing data cleansing strategies and products will increase customer loyalty rates.
- Return on investment (ROI). By reducing manual work required for entering data into a system or fixing human error, automated cleansing solutions increase accuracy levels while decreasing labor costs associated with data. Not only does data cleansing free up resources for strategic projects, but it also streamlines business operations.
When you invest in clean data, you are more likely to see an uptick in your business. In fact, our research finds that 86% say they believe investing in data management directly impacts their business growth.
What are the biggest challenges that organizations face?
The new digital era we have entered has created vast amounts of data to manage. Additionally, people moving or changing emails, jobs, and names contribute to anomalies in a company’s data. Inaccurate data makes it nearly impossible for businesses to stay agile. Further, trying to balance large amounts of insufficient data can hinder an organization from seeing the value of its data.
Ultimately, too much of anything is not good and large volumes of poor consumer data can result in inefficient operations, poor customer experience, and loss of funds. Our research has shown us that 85% of respondents indicate that poor contact data for customers negatively impact their operational processes and efficiency.
How can data cleansing help address these challenges?
Having accurate information is paramount in this day and age when the market is transforming so rapidly. Trustworthy data gives you more confidence in analysis and reporting, which ultimately results in better quality decisions.
There are many tools and solutions that can help establish reliable and trusted data. For example, contact data validation (email, phone, and address) or data management solutions can ensure that data collection and ongoing maintenance are efficient. Either will ensure your data is high-quality data and clean from the point it's captured.
How to get started
Data cleansing is a necessary process that can help companies run more efficiently and effectively by aligning data with business objectives. Organizations can use our data validation tools to clean their data, making their organization more data-driven.
Learn more at EDQ.com on how we can help clean your data so that you have the correct information to reach your customers, save your organization money, and have data to contribute to better decision-making processes and ensure a better action plan.
