There was a time when gathering data was a hard task. Later on, it was a challenge to integrate data, and then it seemed almost impossible to keep it clean. Nowadays, all these things are not only possible but necessary.
Data is a key factor in every aspect of a business, from sales, marketing, and customer service to product design, finances, and so much more. Processed data becomes information, the most valuable commodity for any company.
This means that in order to make informed, data-driven decisions, you need to have high-quality data to power your business. That’s why maintaining data quality is so important.
Ensuring data quality means that your databases are accurate, secure, and consistent throughout the data lifecycle stages. Clean, high-quality data translates into efficiency, transparency, and consistency throughout a business.
The Intelligent Use of High-Quality Data
Perhaps one of the most common motivations to ensure data quality is personalization. According to research, 85% of organizations globally experienced more timely and personalized customer communications as a result of improving their data quality. At the same time, 75% of organizations believe that inaccurate data is undermining their ability to provide a good customer experience.
Data quality can determine operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and informed marketing decisions. 52% of organizations maintain high-quality data to increase efficiency and improve cost savings. A company that invests in the maintenance of its database will see direct benefits, such as:
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Lower Costs in Email Marketing: Reducing the number of emails sent to inactive users and invalid email addresses can increase opening rates, deliverability, and decrease costs on email marketing platforms.
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Cross-Selling: When there’s detailed information about a customers’ pain points, purchasing behaviors, and preferences, this data can open doors for sales departments to offer an additional product or service to an existing customer.
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Accountancy Savings: Having up-to-date customer information makes the billing process and credit control more accurate and efficient.
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Personalized Products and Services: Data integrity provides a faithful approach to the customer. If used correctly, data can provide invaluable insights for companies to understand customers, including what they expect from your products and services.
Companies with quality data and advanced analytics capabilities have gained a significant lead over their competitors in the last few years. According to Bain & Company, these companies are twice as likely to be in the top quartile of financial performance in their industries. They also make and execute decisions faster.
How to Maintain a High-Quality Database
Organizations all over the world are increasingly relying on SaaS solutions to manage their data and increase its quality, recognizing that data and analytics will provide a key source of opportunity in the coming years. The most urgent services that these organizations need for their data management are:
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Removing Duplicates: Normally, data comes from multiple sources such as web forms, emails, and marketing leads. Additionally, in certain cases, contacts are being created by different departments or several agents in the same department. These factors increase the possibility of having duplicated contacts, which means that emailing services can become inefficient and generate unnecessary costs. In addition, the information in your CRM or help desk can get confusing or inaccurate.
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Minimizing Human Error: Human error is one of the most common ways to lose information. A bad phone number, a spelling error, or typo can even make you lose a potential customer. You can minimize the chances of human error by automating essential data management tasks.
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Real-time Data Updates: Staying on top of data updates is never easy. Automatically updating data across SaaS tools means that all teams get the latest, most accurate data in their tools without the need for manual updates or imports and exports.
