If you didn’t get a chance to read Part 1, here’s a link
In this second of three posts, we look at a further three charts that are essential for managing your data.
When speaking about data quality, most of us focus on what’s wrong with our data, but there is another more important measure, namely, what data are we missing.
Having data with errors is annoying and a hindrance to your business, but it gives you a chance to fix it. Once fixed this becomes useful.
But if you didn’t have the data in the first place, you can’t fix it, you’re just missing information.
In many cases, missing data is the bigger problem.
Let’s look at an example of emails. Email data quality tends to be very good as people need an email to communicate with, so error rates are low. The problem is with missing emails. If you don’t have an email then you’re missing an important method of communication for that individual.
To address the problem of missing data, the charts in this post relate to the process of capturing information and how management and employees can benefit. After all, it’s your ability to capture correct data that determines the strength of your data.
Let’s look at three most common places where data is captured: online, via telephone and face-to-face.
In most online methods for data capture you can insist a visitor fills in all their details you want. Inevitably an email is correct and in many instances the rest of the information is missing or false.
To capture more information online, there has to be a good reason for the web visitor to part with the information.
The more information you ask without a good reason the more likely you are to have missing or false data.
This process is known as friction, that is, asking for information without a good reason causes friction towards your online goal. To avoid this friction, it’s better to ask for the minimal amount of data to process, and once the visitor becomes a customer then ask for more information.
Capturing data via telephone has the advantage that you can clarify details with the caller. You can double check email addresses, mailing addresses and other information. Problems occur when you’re capturing information and a language barrier exists with the caller or your understanding of foreign data is not sufficient.
Face-to-face capture is similar to telephone capture, but what gets in the way here is when people are in a hurry.
For example, people checking into a hotel. You may give them a form to fill out but the guest just wants to register and move into their room, so much of the information is not captured. (I think we’ve all done this, we fill out the absolute minimum.)
So let’s look at the charts. These charts are essentially the same but applied to three different levels in a business:
- Company Level
- Team / Office / Business Unit Level
- Individual Level
Company Level Capture Chart
In the first set of charts we want to know on a month by month basis how much data we are capturing in our CRM system for new contacts.
The chart identifies how many emails, phone numbers and addresses we are capturing.
We can then create an overall metric by using a weighted formula. Here an email is the most important piece of information (this may be different for your business), then an address and finally the phone number. So the metric looks like:
This chart has the advantage of looking at one single value over time, here it is:
Team / Office / Business Unit Level Capture Chart
The above chart is great for senior management as it shows the overall trend. What line managers want to see is a chart for their down line.
In this example we compare sales teams, but the charts can equally apply to office locations, business units, departments, hotels, etc. The chart shows three sales teams and their capture metrics.

Showing managers their team’s performance in comparison to another team is a great way to motivate better data quality. The natural competitiveness makes managers address the issues with their team particularly when they know that senior management will see these results.
Showing managers their team’s performance in comparison to another team is a great way to motivate better data quality. The natural competitiveness makes managers address the issues with their team particularly when they know that senior management will see these results.
Individual Level Capture Chart
Its people who enter data into a system, so why not show them how good or bad they are at capturing data.
There’s nothing like a number associated with your name to drive the correct behaviour.
So in the final chart we have individual sales people and their capture metrics.
Summary
Capture charts are very useful, it places focus directly on capturing the right information needed to run your business. Senior Management get an overall performance measure, line managers can compare to other teams and individuals have their measures highlighted for all to see.
These are easy charts to create as they look at data capture rather than the accuracy of the data, but their impact will always be positive as your business captures more data.
If you would like to create similar charts and reports, please contact me and we can help to define metrics and create the right reports for your business.