• Andrew Abraham, EDQ Managing Director at Experian UK&I


• 10.01.2023 03:30 pm
#data #management

Over the past few years, data management has become more and more important to organisations. Trustworthy data replaces that gut feeling and drives innovation, customer experience, and decision-making, while also reducing operational risk and negative impact on overall business reputation.

Our 2022 Global Data Management research showed that 85% of organisations indicate that poor quality customer contact data negatively impacts operational processes and efficiency and, in turn, hinders their chances of being flexible and agile. The reality is that closing the data quality gap is now more important than ever before.

As we look ahead to 2023, we anticipate a sharp increase in the prioritisation of data management by organisations across the UK. If you’re ready to take the next data quality step, here are my top five data management considerations.

1. Profile and analyse

Profile your data to enjoy greater visibility and a more holistic view of what all your source databases look like. This provides the opportunity to both analyse and understand what gaps you currently have and how they can be addressed. It is important that organisations have a full and deep knowledge of what their current data looks like before embarking on a data quality programme.

2. Validate your data

Once you’ve established a clear view of your data, data validation is a simple starting point to begin to improve data-quality. By implementing real-time validation tools that check and validate data as it is entered across all touchpoints, businesses are able to prevent poor data at the source. It ensures the information you hold in your system such as postal addresses; email addresses and phone numbers are up to date – saving both time and money and helping to avoid issue such as reputational damage and fraud.

3. Enrich your data

Through the combination of first-party data from internal sources and third-party data from external sources, businesses have the opportunity to make their data more useful. By enhancing data with the additional information, it quickly becomes more useable, insightful, and ultimately valuable, able to amplify customer understanding, inform business planning, and drive success.

4. Building and leveraging a single customer view

Implementing a single customer view is often one of the fundamental success factors of an effective data management programme/strategy. This demands both cultural and systemic changes to place the customer at the heart of business priorities and marketing strategies. Identity Resolution can be implemented to work quietly, consistently, and regularly in the background – delivering a deep and holistic understanding of customers that can transform business planning, strategy, and operations.

5. Routinely cleanse your data

Most importantly, data needs to be cared for just like other key business assets. It’s vital to regularly review all the data within the database to either remove or update information that is incomplete, incorrect, improperly formatted, duplicated, or irrelevant. Implementing an automated solution means this can be done quickly and easily, often in the background.

Ultimately, data management drives businesses forward. Having a robust data management process is crucial in determining how businesses acquire, organise, analyse, and deliver data to best support business objectives.

It’s fundamental that organisations are equipped with the necessary knowledge and resources to act fast, as customer data becomes ever more valuable. With factors such as the cost-of-living crisis driving change in consumer behaviour and accelerating digital transformation, businesses must be prepared to adapt accordingly.