Data Cleansing: A Practice You Definitely Can’t Let Go of in 2022

Data - Others

Data Cleansing and Enrichment Services

Is data an integral part of your organization?

If yes, we hope data cleansing is taking a central stage of your data strategy!

No?

Well, it’s time to re-think & bring data cleansing at priority in 2022! Wondering why? Let’s find out in this blog.

Data Cleansing: What is it & Why Does it Matter?

Quality data is the essential foundation of your business. To ensure that you have a high-quality dataset, you need to get rid of the following:

  • Corrupted data
  • Irrelevant data
  • Duplicate data
  • Missing data
  • Data errors

This can be achieved with data cleansing services!

“Data cleansing” is a critical aspect of the overall data management process. This primarily involves cleaning up the data by identifying errors and irrelevant content. This also involves fixing and filling the missing information, incorrect or duplicated data. And especially when data is becoming a valuable asset of companies, there are still 95% of businesses that cite the need to manage unstructured data as their business problem. This is where data cleansing can help!

The process of data cleansing involves:

  • Filtering Data/Records- Data cleansing involves filtering the data which means all the relevant information is sorted & cleansed. This step clears the unwanted & irrelevant content from your database and records.
  • Eliminating Incorrect, Obsolete Entries & Typos- Data cleansing & scrubbing practice of identifying and removing data/entries that are no longer relevant. As the data comes from various sources, it may often have certain errors. These errors and incorrect entries are also removed from your data, leaving behind accurate & up-to-date information.
  • Filling in the Missing Entries/Data- Data enrichment, being a part of data cleansing, ensures that all the gaps or missing information in your data are filled and you have complete information. For eg, if your database has missing email ids, data enrichment services can help you fill those gaps & get you all the missing entries.
  • Normalizing and Standardizing Data- Data standardization is the way of putting the data in a common format for easy access & better interpretation. This practice helps you bring uniformity to the data set. Similarly, data normalization enables you to organize & structure your data in logical & uniform storage, thereby making your data coherent & meaningful.
  • Verifying & Validating Data- For all your lead list to be accurate, data cleansing involves verifying and validating the information against their sources. This process can replace your old and obsolete email ids, phone numbers, and other information with new and relevant data.
  • Identifying & Removing De-Duplication Data- As data comes from various touchpoints, often data is full of duplicate and redundant entries. This can be corrected with data cleansing methods. With data de-duplication techniques, you can get rid of duplicate entries and free up space.

If your company is looking forward to building a data-centric culture, data cleansing is indeed an aspect that cannot be ignored.

Unlocking and deriving value from data is increasingly becoming important. But since the company data comes from various sources, this data may often have incomplete, invalid inconsistent, and duplicated records. To make this data ready to be analyzed comes the need for data cleansing methods. Clean & standardized data aids in marketing, networking, sales efforts, business growth, business decisions, and other facets of a business.

Especially after COVID 19, when data has become one of the most valuable business assets, maintaining its accuracy is of utmost importance. Take for instance that your database has missing phone numbers or email ids that are no longer valid. Are they of any use? No! This is where data cleansing & enrichment helps! When you clean your data, all the inaccurate data is rectified, leaving behind the highest quality information!

Also read: 3 Data Cleansing Practices to Empower Your Business Decisions

8 Important Reasons Why Data Cleansing Cannot be Ignored in 2022

1. Amplify Your Email Marketing Efforts

If email marketing is a part of your overall marketing strategy, you definitely cannot let go of data cleansing processes. This is because of the fact that your customers change their email id frequently, and when you send emails to these accounts, it leads to a waste of marketing effort. With an effective data cleansing process in place, you can identify inactive email ids, pick out cold leads, eradicate duplicate entries and add the correct information.

Once your database and email lists are clean and updated, you can make sure that the emails are reaching out to the actual people, This helps in improving the email deliverability rates and results in better sales.

2. Improves Customer Acquisition Rate

If you are keen on improving your customer acquisition efforts in 2022, data cleansing is one sure-shot way! As data cleansing involves filtering records, validating contacts, removing duplicate entries, and completing missing data, it gives you an efficient customer list with accurate information. This is no less than a golden opportunity! You can roll out your marketing initiatives, communicate with your potential customers & chalk out the best tactics to engage with them effectively, thereby improving your customer acquisition rates.

3. Lead to the Better Decision-Making

Also mentioned earlier, the basis of effective decision-making in a business lies in its data! As your company generates massive amounts of data, getting errors is natural. But if you fail to prioritize data quality management, it will result in poor decision-making and ultimately business loss. On the other hand, if you have access to clean & accurate data, it acts as a catalyst to better analytics & better business intelligence.

4. Adds Value to Other Data Functions

All the other aspects of data functions are highly dependent on clean, accurate, and up-to-date data. Functions like data processing, data analytics, data entry, etc. require this data to help you uncover rich insights, successfully manage your data, and put it to the best use. If the data used for these functions is not accurate, relevant, and updated, all the efforts can simply go in vain.

5. Helps you in Targeting the Right Audience

Another important reason to prioritize the data cleansing process is to ensure that you are targeting the right target audience. Now that the market has become highly volatile, customer habits do not stick for long and change every now and then. This means that all your previous data stored can be now irrelevant. To make sure that you know the customer habits and have access to the latest information, it is important that you keep your data relevant and free from errors using the data cleansing techniques.

6. Saves Your Valuable Time & Efforts

Imagine having all the cluttered information in your database. What if you want to extract important information promptly, but find that all your data is unorganized, cluttered, and full of errors? Well, it’s going to be a daunting task! You certainly don’t want to be spending all your time & effort to find the correct information and filter out the relevant information. This is where data cleansing makes your work much easier! With clean and accurate data you can easily fetch information in no time.

7. Allows You to Make Smarter Marketing Decisions

If you want to make the most out of your marketing spend, it is necessary to keep your data clean and up-to-date. The more you know more about your prospects, leads and opportunities, the more you can create a personalized experience for them, and get the maximum return on investment.

8. Frees up Your System Space

With data-deduplication techniques, data cleansing is a proven way to reduce your space consumption and remove data that is of no use. When you have repetitive or obsolete data which is no longer relevant, it will only take up your storage. As a consequence, you will have to spend more money on getting external storage. On the other hand, by following a regular data cleansing practice, you will be able to regularly clean up your data, where free space can be used for new and relevant data.

Why Should You Outsource Data Cleansing Services?

Well, data cleansing is not easy as it may sound and therefore requires professional help. Wondering why? Let’s find out:

1. Saves Valuable Time & Effort

Data sorting, filtering, validating individual contracts, finding duplicates, and cleansing require a great deal of time & effort. Especially when your data is huge, the cleansing process may take up hefty time. Especially when you have limited resources, you will end up engaging them in this task, wherein other important aspects of your business will be neglected. And so, the best solution lies in outsourcing data cleansing services!

Since data experts from your outsourcing partner have vast expertise & experience in practicing data cleansing, you can rely on them for the fast completion of your project. You can get your work done in a quick turnaround time & save your valuable time & effort.

2. Get Experts Who have the Nitty-Gritty of Data Cleansing

By outsourcing, you get access to a talented pool of resources. These professionals have worked with an extensive portfolio of clients, and are well-aware of all the techniques & procedures followed to give you clean and accurate data that further strengthens your organization. These professionals have the required skills and competencies to solve the biggest of your data challenges with ease. No matter how voluminous or complex your data is, these experts can help you overcome all the data cleansing challenges.

3. Get Help in Other Data Functions

Most of the experienced and reliable data cleansing companies provide a full spectrum of data solutions. If you need assistance in any of the other related data functions, you can get complete solutions under one roof. These outsourcing companies may offer you support in data entry, data processing, data analysis, data analytics, among others. This way, you need not hire resources for each task, and get complete data support from your outsourcing partner.

And the best part is when you club these services, your outsourcing partner may also give you exciting discounts or additional benefits for leveraging all the solutions together!

4. Saves your Money

Data cleansing requires skilled resources to perform the desired tasks. Furthermore, you need tools and software to practice data cleansing. Hiring these resources, setting up a data cleansing team, and purchasing all the necessary tools is an expensive deal. On the other hand, simply outsourcing data cleansing services can help you cut down your costs and save you a great deal of money!

5. Boosts your Productivity

When you have clean and up-to-date company data, you can put it to the best use. Whether you want to augment your marketing efforts, focus on networking, make intelligent business decisions or improve your previous business procedures, outsourcing gives you an edge and boosts your productivity. Additionally, when you have experts taking care of the data cleansing process, your employees can raise their productivity and focus on other aspects of your business.

6. Frees up your Resources

Leveraging b2b data cleansing services ensures that your in-house team is free from the burden of managing, cleaning, and organizing your company data. This enables them to focus on other facets of your business and further contribute to your business growth.

7. Access to the Latest Tools & Techniques

When you outsource data cleansing services, you have access to the latest tools & technologies present in the market. As the outsourcing companies keep themselves equipped with the best tools, you can rest assured that the data cleansing process will be done by experts using the best methods, tools, and technologies.

How to Find a Suitable Outsourcing Partner?

With so many outsourcing companies present in the market, it is indeed a tough choice to make. However, to make sure that you end up finding the right compy, here are a few things to consider:

  • Make sure that the company has rich experience
  • Ensure that the company has flexible hiring models
  • Make sure the outsourcing company has scalable solutions
  • Check their past projects and portfolio
  • Make sure that the company follows strict data protection measures & protocols
  • Check for customized packages

Summing up!

Moving ahead in 2022, there lies a tremendous opportunity for businesses with cleansed and enriched data. Especially when the demand for quality data is constantly rising, data cleansing practices cannot be ignored & should be given utmost priority. In order to unlock data insights and stay relevant in this dynamic market, relying on top-notch data cleansing services, is the best solution to improve your bottom line. And so, you must set up a continual procedure in place and cleanse your data regularly to make the most out of your data!

Write to us & get a free quote today: info@suntecindia.com

SunTec India Blog

The SunTec India Blog

Brought to you by the Marketing & Communications Team at SunTec India. We love sharing interesting stories and informed opinions about data, eCommerce, digital marketing and analytics, app development and other technological advancements.