Why is Data Cleansing important?

Intro

Data cleansing is an important process for many businesses across the globe. Many industries now rely on data to grow their business, so it is crucial to manage data efficiently and reduce all kinds of errors and inconsistencies. Old and inaccurate data can have a detrimental impact on marketing and sales results, including the operational activities of the organisation. Data quality issues can cause complications anywhere in information systems but can be resolved using various data cleaning techniques. So, what is data cleansing? Data cleansing is a process used to gather inaccurate or incomplete information and then improve the quality of it by correcting the data.

Why is it important?

The reason that data cleansing is so important is that it is an essential process to achieve high quality data. Data quality is vital because it will help your organisation make improved decisions. It is estimated that B2B companies’ data will decay on average about 40% per year and this is expected to have risen as a result of the pandemic. As a result of the loss of inaccurate data, companies will face difficulties in their operational activities and experience fewer results in their marketing. So, what defines high quality data? Data that is accurate, consistent, complete and standardised is key to attaining quality records.

What are the benefits?

Since data is a major asset for many businesses having inaccurate data can be dangerous and lead to ineffective business activities. If your organisation had clean data, then falling into this situation can easily be avoided and improve customer and employee satisfaction. Data cleaning removes major errors that are inevitable due to human error and multiple sources pulling in information into one dataset. Seeking out a professional data cleansing service to clean up the records will increase productivity, improve decision making and much more.

Common errors when dealing with data

There can be multiple mistakes that occur when dealing with data that will require your organisation to have a data cleanse. Here are some of the biggest errors that we see at Data HQ that you could be dealing with.

1. Misspellings
   
   One of the biggest errors when dealing with data is misspelt data. Misspelt or incorrect values mostly occur due to human error and can be problematic when referring back to the information the original author of the information filled.
2. Contradictions
   
   Contradiction errors occur when two sets of data conflict with each other. For example, in personal databases someone may have two records with different addresses, however, other information is recorded accurately. At Data HQ, we can run your data against the Royal Mail national change of address files. This enables us accurately acquire information on a person’s current location and then validate this via our internal procedures.
3. Duplication
   
   Duplication is when a set of data exists multiple times on a database. For example, there can be two records of identical people with everything the same except for some minor differences such as containing middle names or abbreviations of initials. No data is inaccurate here, but the analytics and statistical information will be misleading.
4. Abbreviations & Cryptic Values
   
   Speaking of abbreviating initials, the use of cryptic values and abbreviations can cause many problems in the world of data. Not only do they increase the risk of duplication, but they also reduce the ability to sort information.

How Data HQ go about the process of data cleansing

Manually going through data and cleansing it yourself can be an overwhelming, difficult and a time consuming task. While much of the data cleansing process can be achieved by software, it also takes a skilled professional to examine and monitor the project.

At Data HQ, we go through data files and match it into our database and suppression services. This enables us to provide our clients with an audit that tells them how many records are out of business, relocated, duplicated, etc.

In addition, our reporting for B2B organisations provides a comprehensive overview of key areas of your database so we can append additional firmographics as well as data fields to provide email addresses for existing or new contacts.

If you are looking for a reliable and professional solution for your data cleansing process, contact us today! Our friendly team would be more than happy to help.