Standardising your data for accurate data-based decision making!

Whether you are looking after sales, marketing, purchasing, finance or the business as a whole, you need to be certain that the information on which you make your decisions is reliable, complete and has a consistent set of definitions.

The latter point especially can cause major problems, especially if your interpretation of the data is different to that of someone else.  Just like comparing apples with oranges - yes they are both fruit, can be similar size, but taste rather different.

Scenario

However, it is usually not that simple to standardise definitions that give each piece of information the same meaning, and is made far more complex where the following situations are true:

• Your database or accounts system has been in place for many years, with many different staff using the systems over time. Data entry may have been inconsistent over time.

• Your company has acquired other businesses and their systems have been merged with your own. Data has often been loaded as-is, rather than being accurately translated and imported.

• Your company operates more than one CRM, database or accounts system, exacerbating the issues raised in the first two points.

• Old operational systems have been migrated into new, with new data definitions and code structures put in place at the time of implementation. However, data from legacy systems still remains in the same format.

• You look after a group of companies, all running a mix of financial, sales and operating systems. You need to see the bigger picture but as information is presented quite differently by each company, there is no easy way to achieve this. Again, this is made worse if any of the previous points are true.

• Finally, if you use different companies (or brands) to market similar products, and the product codes and descriptions vary for virtually the same item, taking a customer-centric marketing approach without having a system that first links similar products, can result in customer confusion, defection and lost sales.

Cost to your business

Having inconsistent data can have a major impact on your business - in more ways than one!

• Missed opportunities - you want to cross-sell or up-sell a new product to a segment of your database. To ensure relevance you want to find people who previously purchased a specific product or mix of products. But due to inconsistent codes and descriptions on your product file, and the way sales values are banded, you cannot select the people you really need. Result - higher marketing costs, less response, less orders, less profit.

• Poor decision making - you're looking at product demand in order to determine your sales, marketing and stock holding strategies for the coming months. However, from one system you get one picture. From another, a somewhat different answer. From product records you believe there are X existing customers. But your reports show Y, and even then, the numbers just don't add up. You therefore go with your gut feel and end up with incorrect sales and marketing strategies, and purchase more stock than you need.  Why? Usually because you don't have a single view of your data and customers, and the data you do have has different meanings across systems.

• Financial direction - looking through reports, sales values are not as you expect.  Why? Because the business performance analysis is based on value bands rather than raw values - and the way the bands have been created is different across systems and/or companies. For instance, in one system the bands are 1-4, 5-9, 10-19, 20-99.  In another, 1-10,11-25, 26-50... So if you select '10', you get results in one system of 10-19, and in the other, 1-10. Then there is the question of variations in sales reporting and differences across KPIs. Only half of the products sold are reported and KPI significance varies. Why? Because of coding variations between old and new product ranges and differences in the formulae and base data used to create the KPIs.

Cost-effective solution

Whilst there are several expensive solutions to this kind of problem, Tech4T take a practicable, affordable and timely approach. You provide us with a copy of your data and we will sort it out for you - doing just the work you need!

We first audit your files, report the findings, then develop the rules to standardise data definitions across multiple operational, CRM, order processing and accounts systems. We ensure fields align correctly - esp. if data is taken from spreadsheets - and that product, profile, marketing or category codes, values and descriptions, together with fields such as job title, function, marketing measures, etc. are uniform, with any value ranges standardised across all records. This prevents data misinterpretation, enables more accurate list selection and helps identify gaps in your data. 

We then populate incomplete addresses, remove duplication, then combine and enrich your databases, lists and spreadsheets - ensuring no information is lost. 

We can then transform your data to a single customer view which we can set up online to drive your marketing, and also to deliver business and marketing intelligence using Excel spreadsheets set up as dynamic dashboards. Then, at a frequency to be agreed, you supply a new extract and we will bring the files, single customer view and dashboards up-to-date. 

Enhanced files can be supplied back to you in whatever format you need!   Give us a call on +44 (0)1733 890790