Data cleansing is the process of spotting and rectifying inaccurate or corrupt data from a database. The process is mainly used in databases were incorrect, incomplete, inaccurate, or irrelevant parts of the data are identified and then modified, replaced, or deleted. Business enterprises largely rely on data whether it is the integrity of customers’ addresses or ensuring accurate invoices are emailed or posted to the recipients. To ensure that the customer data is used in the most productive and meaningful manner that can increase the intrinsic value of the brand, business enterprises must give importance to data quality.

Here are the advantages of data cleansing:

Improves the Efficiency of Customer Acquisition Activities:

Business enterprises can significantly boost their customer acquisition efforts by cleansing their data as a more efficient prospects list having accurate data can be created. Throughout the marketing process, business enterprises must ensure that the data is clean, up-to-date, and accurate by regularly following data quality routines. Clean data can also ensure the highest returns on email or postal campaigns as chances of encountering outdated addresses are very low. Multi-channel customer data can also be managed seamlessly which provides the enterprise with an opportunity to carry out successful marketing campaigns in the future as they would be aware of the methods to effectively reach out to their target audience.

Improves Decision Making Process:

The cornerstone of effective decision making in a business enterprise is customer data. According to Sirius Decisions, data in an average B2B organization doubles every 12-18 months and though the data might be clean initially, errors can creep in at any time. Yet various enterprises fail to prioritize data quality management. In fact, many of them don’t even have a record of the last time quality control was performed on their customer’s data. Accurate information and quality data are essential to decision making. Clean data can support better analytics as well as all-round business intelligence which can facilitate better decision making and execution. In the end, having accurate data can help business enterprises make better decisions which will contribute to the success of the business in the long run.

Streamlines Business Practices:

Eradicating duplicate data from the database can help business enterprises to streamline business practices and save a lot of money. Data cleansing can also help in determining if particular job descriptions within the enterprise can be changed or if those positions can be integrated somewhere else. If reliable and accurate sales information is available, the performance of a product or a service in the market can be easily assessed. Data cleansing along with the right analytics can also help the enterprise to identify an opportunity to launch a new product or service in the market which the consumers might like, or it can highlight various marketing avenues that the enterprises can try. For example, if a marketing campaign is unsuccessful, the business enterprise can look at various other marketing channels that have the best customer response data and implement them.

Increases Productivity:

Having a clean and properly maintained database can help business enterprises to ensure that the employees are making the best use of their work hours. It can also prevent the staff of the enterprise from contacting customers with out-of-date information or create invalid vendor files in the system by conveniently helping them to work with clean records thereby maximizing the staff’s efficiency and productivity. This is the reason behind clean data reducing the risk of fraud as the staff has access to an accurate vendor or customer data when payments or refunds are initiated.

Increases Revenue:

Business enterprises that work on improving the consistency and increasing the accuracy of their data can drastically improve their response rates which results in increased revenue. Clean data can help business enterprises to significantly reduce the number of returned mails. If there are any time-sensitive information or promotions that the enterprise wants to convey to their customers directly, accurate information can help in reaching the customers conveniently and quickly. Duplicate data is another aspect that can be effectively eradicated by data cleansing. According to Sirius Decisions, the financial impact of duplicate data is directly proportional to the time that it remains in the database. Duplicate data can significantly drain the enterprise’s resources as they will have to spend twice as much on a single customer. For example, if multiple emails are sent to the same customer, they might get annoyed and might completely lose interest in the enterprise’s products and services. As business enterprises expand they will require a large number of resources to maintain accurate databases. A clean database that is used for email marketing campaigns can drastically reduce bounce backs and updated information can be transformed into a key business asset. There is no doubt that data cleansing can help business enterprises to achieve business goals with ease. Business enterprises can also employ the services of an expert data cleansing service provider for increased return on investment in their marketing activities. Data cleansing can not only save time and money for business enterprises, but it can also ensure that the enterprise achieves overall operational efficiency.