Data: When Less is More

Aviation, automobile and even train companies spend significant amounts of money annually reducing the weight of their products. Take the aviation industry for example, millions of pounds are invested each year into R&D to reduce the weight of their plane’s components and structures whilst maintaining the relevant strength properties and functionality. The plane thus becomes more fuel efficient, it can carry more passengers and ultimately generates more profit.

The same principles apply to the data in your business’ CRM and ERP systems. When such systems are burdened with unnecessary weight (duplicates and other low-quality baggage) they will not work as efficiently, effectively or as expected.

It is therefore essential that the unnecessary weight that bad data applies to your business is eradicated.

The removal of bad data can lead to significant advantages to your business such as:

More Trust in your Business Intelligence

Important business decision are often based on data received from all parts of the business. Low-quality data results in low-quality information leading to low-quality decisions being made with high levels of certainty.

It is far more beneficial to have a smaller amount of data that you can trust than masses of unreliable data.

More Effective Marketing

You will get a more accurate and targeted list for your marketing campaigns, which yield better results from a smaller investment. No longer will you be erroneously targeting the same person twice, paying twice or over/undercharging customers.

Hence, you’re getting more from less…

More Customer Insight

Without a single customer view, customer insight is not just a challenge – it’s impossible! When your customer data is stored in multiple silo’s, be that: Patients, Students, Guests, Shoppers etc. Until your records are deduplicated and their respective transactional data can be linked to the surviving Master (Golden) Record there can be no foresight or insight; only hindsight, which as we know is not a lot of use.

You’ll have fewer records, but more insight about each customer – Again, more from less.

More Kudos to IT

There are no data initiatives, just business initiatives. The IT department are not really responsible for Data Quality – Everyone is. Having said this, the task of maintaining quality data seems to fall on the IT department.

Data should support the business, not hinder it. If IT ensures everyone has the right tools and the know how to do the right things right, then data will serve the business well.

This is definitely the way to get more esteem for the IT department. Erroneous data should be avoided, hence, there will be less waste from repairing defective data sets and more value can be derived from the data assets to deliver more value in the organisation.

It is clear that less data can deliver a lot more, provided it is accurate. So how will you act to cut the excess weight of your business’ bad data, and unleash your full potential?