Business data is one of the most valuable assets one can leverage to power up sales and improve marketing. But in the current scenario, it is becoming quite a challenging task for businesses. To manage huge pools of data gathered over the years(data cleansing).
Since most businesses face critical data problems such as outdated information, junk records, irregularly formatted files, and duplicate contacts, there is a dire need to manage and streamline data in order to make the businesses all the more agile. The action plan should rightly incorporate a regular and periodic data review and maintenance of hygiene of the database. And that’s when data cleansing comes into the picture.
Now, what if you don’t clean your data? Well, in a way you are using inaccurate, outdated, irrelevant, or duplicated data. To make business decisions that dig a big hole in the bottom line. Say, if your marketing strategy is based on outdated facts that are no longer valid, it is bound to fail.
Even worse, your potential customers might unsubscribe from your list and even spread the word across, adversely affecting your customer experiences, revenue, and most essentially, your brand reputation. In such a scenario, all that needs to be done is to implement an effective data cleansing mechanism or simply go for a professional company offering data scrubbing services before it’s too late.
Here are five lucid steps centered around maintaining data quality:
1. Plan, Plan, And Plan Some More
Just as you plan every business activity, set clear-cut goals as to what you intend to achieve from the data gathered. Establish clear, pre-defined goals so as to easily manage large volumes of business data. This will definitely help you in the long run.
2. Proactively Remove Data Redundancies
Finding duplicate entries in a business database is very much possible while generating leads from multiple touchpoints. An ideal strategy to adopt would be to merge or remove duplicates and check the data for consistency beforehand. After setting the goal, you must comb through the data and rightly identify the duplicates, ensuring that only the most recent, accurate information is retained for further processing.
3. Eliminate Errors Of All Shapes & Sizes
Once you are done eliminating data redundancy, the next step is to correct errors, if any, be it a wrong area code, an incorrect email extension or phone number, a spelling error, or any other typo. Apart from error correction, you should also fill in the missing details and look for inconsistencies in the data. Add value to your data by making it more valid and consistent.
4. Do Away With Inactive Leads & Junk Contacts
There might exist some dead leads that are of no use to your business. You are wasting your bandwidth on those leads that may not convert at all! Remove them from your database right away. Eliminate all the junk contacts that are not interested in your products, and give you false information. Or the ones who just feed in email addresses like blah@asdf.com or abc@email.com to download your valuable content.
5. Scrutinize Data For Uniformity
Implementing a definite format for area codes, email addresses, etc. can easily help in preventing inconsistent results and bringing uniformity to the data. For example, if you intend to define a specified format ensuring completeness, then you must regulate the address standardization process.
Opting for a professional address standardization service will be a viable option to go for, resulting in complete, well-formatted addresses, aligned in a uniform manner. In short, uniformity of data is essential and you must check your data for uniformity and make it all the more manageable.
Pro Tip
Get help! Goes without saying that everything you do for your business should serve its purpose. Data cleansing is no exception. If you do it right, everything will fall into place. But, if you need help aligning your data processes in the right direction. Then outsourcing would be a great idea.
Conclusion
With the aforesaid steps, you can easily leverage the benefits of data cleansing. If things get out of hand, don’t hesitate to ask for help from professionals who provide the best data entry services.
Like other processes in businesses, data scrubbing isn’t easy and time-consuming. However, that doesn’t mean ‘data cleaning services aren’t rewarding. Quite the opposite. Instead, many organizations find that outsourcing data cleansing services to a reliable and experienced company give them the information required for success. Some of the benefits of outsourcing are enlisted below:
- Enhanced Decision-Making
- More Accessible Data
- Increased Scalability & Flexibility
- Time & Cost Saving
- Better Usage Of Relevant Data
- Right Customer Targeting
- Effective Business Processes
- Enhanced Operational Performance
- Process Accuracy
Once your data is cleansed, you’ll get endless options that allow you to take on every business opportunity and your business to great heights with no turnbacks.
The clean the data, the more the success.
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