Consider your organisation's specific objectives and expectations.
What have you got......Is it a customer/client or prospecting database, business or consumer or is it somewhere in between?
What do you want to achieve, what's involved?
• De-duplicate and clean
• Append emails, telephone numbers or other intelligence
• Reconnect with old customers
• Profile, analyse or bench mark
• A combination of these or something else
The data will be organised into a standardised format, from there we'll perform an audit, this will return us a good understanding of the current state of the data, the processes and procedures it would benefit from and the condition it would be in at the end of the process.
We'll write the report, recommend the processes required in order to achieve your goals and quote on the costs involved.
This is often where the selling process begins: many of our clients discover there is a need to convince their stakeholders or board members, their directors, immediate boss and sometimes themselves that this investment is essential for the organisation to make better business decisions, retain customers, gain new ones; to maintain/improve its competitive edge and standing.......whilst many senior managers understand the impact of poor data quality within the organisation, be prepared to have to sell the benefits of implementing a database quality exercise.
Do your research, speak to colleagues both formally and informally, in your department and across the company, find out how they are negatively affected and how they would benefit from a complete and accurate database.......get them on board.
Then.....measure, measure, measure, document and put together a compelling argument for action, show how doing nothing is not an option, how a poor database is:
• Costing £££
• Damaging your organisation's reputation
Decide what the drivers are and demonstrate how removing deficiencies will:
• Reduce costs and produce savings
• Empower departments to efficiently perform in-house processes
• Enable effective, targeted communication and engagement with customers and prospects
• Increase productivity and morale
• Ensure compliance with current legislation
• Protect and help restore brand and standing
Calculate return in terms of £££ and time; demonstrate ROI as tangible benefits.
ie. simply removing duplicate records; (number of records x cost of marketing piece = saving £££)
(reduce the costs of outbound follow-up communications - duplicates x cost of marketing piece/telephone calls = saving £££) (multiply by number of campaigns = saving £££).
When you have your complete and accurate database, initiate a company wide data quality strategy to ensure your database continues to yield a positive return for your organisation going forward.
