Typical data-related issues that can affect your customer loyalty and bottom-line

Direct issues resulting from poor quality data…

• Duplication can result in multiple sales approaches and direct marketing communications to the same person resulting in lost customer goodwill and wasted effort;

• Poor quality or incorrect data means that communications are not as effective (phone, fax, email, post) and ROI suffers;

• Sales bonuses may be incorrectly calculated if such schemes are based on the number of calls or visits made or leads generated - due to duplication;

• Wasted postage will be incurred from undelivered or duplicate delivered items;

• Deploying poor quality data may result in additional cost for cleansing and enhancement every time the data is used.

Indirect issues resulting from poor quality data…

• Conflicting or multiple offers made to the same person can confuse or annoy them resulting in customer churn;

• Analysis is skewed, resulting in incorrect business or marketing decisions;

• Less effective targeting due to incomplete records, inaccurate data, incorrectly derived indicators, etc;

• Gives customers a very poor impression of your business through badly addressed communications and duplicated telemarketing and field sales;

• Bad debt can be missed.

RADIUS - Some of the overall benefits…

• Increased production efficiency achieved through much higher data throughput, less but more flexible import set-up stages, ease of use and spreading of tasks across multiple computers/personnel by deploying stand-alone ‘task-specific’ utilities 

• Greatly reduced annual support costs across technologies 

• Increased reliability, flexibility and functionality - both results and software - and no known file size limitations! Also most software can be easily moved across computer systems. 

• No de-duplication scores to manually interpret. 

• Minimum data importing – i.e. to merge/purge multiple database files in one pass, simply attach them, map the fields to match and run – hundreds or even thousands of files run in a single pass. 

• Enriched service to customers – speed, accuracy, deliverables (customised reports etc.) 

• Improved skills-transfer gained from using specialist (but standardised) tools and proven methodologies that can be easily transferred to in-house developed systems. 

• Better customer understanding through the fusion of third party data sets, marketing data such as SIC codes, geo-demographic coding, employees, turnover, TV regions, mapping coordinates, etc. 

• The correct consolidation of data from duplicated records into new composite ‘information rich’ records

Data auditing, cleansing and enrichment software - real issues…

Having evaluated many software products over the years, we have learnt that despite assurances to the contrary from many software authors there is not one single product that will resolve ALL your data issues. 

A craftsman would not use a Swiss Army knife for their everyday work, but rather a comprehensive tool kit containing specialist tools. 

The same applies to the software you need to manipulate your data, with the only truly acceptable solution for database professionals being to use a collection of proven and specialist technologies and methodologies, and to mix and match these as needed. 

In addition, we have also found that where an application has been written in house to solve a particular data related problem, then often support or on-going development can be difficult or inefficient. Specifically, operational issues can include:

• The end result (your output data) being less than satisfactory

• Unnecessary pressure to deliver on time resulting from restricted access to an all-encompassing 'single' software product

• Additional processing needed due to limited product functionality or inflexible systems 

• Limited user knowledge or software resources resulting in minimised productivity

• Staff efficiency is hampered by consistent but avoidable hassles and frustrations  

About RADIUS

Whilst Technologies4Targeting are always happy to work with clients on a consultative service or bureau basis to tackle 'data related' problems, we recognise that many companies wish to undertake this work for themselves - in-house and with a tool kit (supported from one single source) that they have not had to spend the time researching.

We have therefore put together a suite of specialist software - Rapid Analytical Data Improvement Utility Solution - that is stand-alone and does not require additional software apart from ‘database specific’ ODBC drivers that are usually provided by the software author. 

Each module is fast and easy to use, and focused on streamlining what potentially can be time consuming and labour intensive tasks. Different aspects of the data conversion, enhancement and management process are comprehensively handled, and quickly expose and resolve the potential areas where poor quality data is causing you problems - either directly or indirectly. 

This can include in-accurate analysis of your customer’s value leading to inappropriate targeting and communication strategies that result in eventual customer loss!

The RADIUS Data Improvement Suite comprises modules for:

• Brain storm, define methodology, establish dependencies and automatically translate to project plan - (MindManager)

• Data conversion, audit and exploration (DBMS/Copy, NovaXchange) 

• Database comparison and change identification (DBMS/Compare)

• Character translation and de-duplication pre-cleansing (Dirty Harry) 

• Mixed field identification and splitting (Right Fielder + API)

• UK address formatting and correction with B2C (UK Electoral Roll) and B2B (Commercial database) options, data enrichment using optional external datasets including SIC codes, mapping X/Y co-ordinates, geo-demographic codes, TV regions, etc. (Matchcode)

• Worldwide data improvement (including Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, USA, World) - both batch and interactive address correction (Global Address)

• Name splitting and genderising (Personator and Genderbase + API)

• Output formatting, name casing & automated abbreviation to ‘fixed’ field lengths (Stylelist Pro + API)

• De-duplication, merge-purge and data fusion (DoubleTake + API)

• Mailsort and Walksort formatting for maximum Postal discount (Sortcode)

• Plus for general - but powerful - data manipulation we would always recommend using (SPSS Base) and optionally (SPSS Tables)

All software components come with on-line help and ‘how-to’ files which are usually sufficient to enable the user to get started without any additional training. However, should some training be needed, Tech4T can provide or arrange this based around your own data and specific objectives.

Importantly, when purchasing any or all of the RADIUS components from Tech4T, you also get access to custom developed scripts, proven UK B2B and B2C de-duplication match-keys, tailored look-up tables for the UK, task specific syntax, etc., all designed to speed up your production process and product understanding.