9 Ways to Make Your Business Data More Reliable
Your business data is the lifeblood that runs through your organization. It powers automated workflows, gives customer service reps the full story every time the phone rings, and informs decision-making.
Even small businesses can benefit from the rise of big data by optimizing their organization’s data and creating processes to put it to work. According to Experian, eight in ten businesses believe data is one of their most valuable assets.
When your business data is reliable and accurate, it’s smooth sailing. But when errors, duplicates, and question marks surface… it’s not so pretty. When you can’t trust your business data, problems quickly arise and multiply in every area of your organization.
Businesses lose as much as 20% of revenue due to poor data quality, shares Kissmetrics. Back in 2013, HBR also talked about the ripple effect of unreliable data as part of “Data’s Credibility Problem”:
To get the best results as a data-driven organization, here are some of the best practices to strengthen the foundations and make your business data the most reliable it can be.
Data debt – the cost attached to poor governance of data in a business – is a significant problem for many organizations, and 36% of businesses say data literacy is crucial to future-proof their organization, shares Experian.
Making your business data more reliable doesn’t just happen by magic: it requires strong frameworks, processes and a data-literate workplace. As early in your business journey as possible, ensure that you have:
Remember the old proverb: the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now. The same goes for getting your data in order!
Just like reliable data, messy and unreliable data doesn’t happen accidentally. There’s always a source. To make your business data more reliable, follow the trail back to where data is coming from.
How is data being added to your CRM? Are there forms or manual imports that are causing bad data to clutter your database? Are different team members importing conflicting data in different ways to multiple apps?
Once you have identified how new data is entering your apps, take some time to optimize these data collection channels.
To collect valid and reliable data, make sure that these factors are true for every piece of data you collect:
A recipe for unreliable data is having data silos. A data silo is a collection of data that one department has access to but others do not.
The negative effects of data silos are bad news for performance and productivity for any organization: they include a lack of transparency, efficiency, collaboration, and trust.
To remove data silos, use a central CRM between departments, connect data between the apps in your tech stack, and focus on building a culture of collaboration between departments.
Good business data is organized, adds value to your company, and is collected with explicit permission from users. To make your data more organized, segmentation is your friend.
