3 tips to improve data quality!
What does data quality mean and why is it so important in the context of marketing, sales or service processes?
To be able to speak of good data, the following criteria must be met (according to Wikipedia):
- Correctness: the data should match the conditions in reality as closely as possible.
- Consistency: A data set must not show any contradictions within itself or with other data sets.
- Reliability: The origin of the data (data source) must be traceable.
- Completeness: A data set must contain all necessary attributes.
- Accuracy: The data must be available with the required accuracy (e.g. decimal places).
- Timeliness: All data records must correspond to the desired current state of the depicted reality.
- Redundancy-free: There must be no duplicates within the data records.
- Relevance: The information content of data sets must meet the respective information needs.
- Uniformity: The information in a data record must be structured uniformly.
- Unambiguity: Each data record must be unambiguously interpretable.
- Comprehensibility: The terminology and structure of data records must be consistent with the ideas of the business departments.
Data in our context is often customer and prospect data, as well as opportunities, but also visit reports and the like. The focus in this article is on good customer and prospect data.
Tip #1: Analyze your existing data set and clean it up
- Are all data available in one source (singe source of truth) or are the data distributed in different databases, Excel files, …?
- Is the data clean of duplicates? If not, extract the data and hand it over to a service provider specialized in data quality and the cleaning of incomplete or duplicate data.
- Play back the corrected data or take steps to clean it manually based on the error lists.
- Document this process, as they should do it at least once each year.
Tip #2: Ensure correct and duplicate-free data during operation
- Find a suitable duplicate check solution that can be integrated into your CRM and/or SAP system.
- Implement the solution in such a way that a check takes place when new companies or contacts are created (duplicates and, if necessary, postal check)
Tip #3: Define the completeness and accuracy of your records
- Define which fields should be maintained, even if they are not required fields. Some things can be solved organizationally.
- Training of employees is important. Everyone must have an understanding of the goal of high data quality.
About the author
Stefan is a visionary, innovator and CRM evangelist from the very beginning. Since the early 90s he has been moved by the topics of Marketing, Sales and Service. Furthermore, the topics of integration and user experience have accompanied him since the beginning of his career.