Acuate Data Quality

Do Cloud Applications Make Your Data Worse?

Over the years, its always been a challenge getting clients’ data in and out of their CRM applications. In seems to be an impediment to fixing and cleaning data. Everyone wants good quality data, but sometimes the hassle of getting IT or the clients’ CRM supplier to extract or import data becomes a hurdle. As negotiations take place with IT or the supplier to perform the tasks, the data continues to degrade, marketing campaigns must wait, and reports continue to use poor quality data, producing inaccurate figures. You see this happening a lot with niche CRM applications, where the vendor... Read more →

The Role of Data Cleansing in the World of Data Science

I keep seeing a common phrase that 80% of the work of a Data Scientist is data cleansing. I’m not sure whether this number is a true reflection or not, for me it reinforces the need for good quality data if you want good quality results. If you’re not familiar with the term Data Science, it’s a set of techniques used to extract meaningful information from data sets using methods from Mathematics and Computer Science, particularly, statistics, machine learning, classification and data analytics. You may say that this has been around for over 20 years, and it has, but with... Read more →

Why You Must Demand Good Marketing Data Now

Sometimes something is so obvious and so true, that we find it difficult to create all the time. For example, being positive all the time. It’s easy to see that it’s a good idea, but as human beings we experience negative environments, negative events, negative people, etc., that lead us to have negative emotions and thoughts. So being positive all the time becomes a constant challenge. If being positive becomes your dominate state of mind then you can handle the negatives as they arise, by rationalising it, re-framing it, seeing the good in it or seeing the good in people,... Read more →

Why CRM De-Duplication Doesn’t Deliver

In all my years looking at data, I’ve never found a CRM database without duplicates (I’m assuming a database of more than a few thousand records.) Many of the CRM systems have easy ways to identify duplicates, but duplicates still remain. So why is that? The main reason is that duplicates are far more complex than simply matching of names, emails, etc. Yes, you will match some obvious duplicates this way, but there are many more complex versions. CRM applications assume the data is correct in the first place, that the data is present and that the data is in... Read more →

Good Data Wins, Always – Mathematical Proof

How bad does someone’s data have to be before they realise that bad data just doesn’t work. Working with bad data gets bad results. You try and get away with it until it no longer works for you. You realise you cannot carry on. With no choice, you see that good data is the only way to be. As with so many things in life only when things go wrong do you change your attitude towards something…I’ve been there many times myself…it’s only human. So, let’s learn this lesson a little earlier, before things go really bad for your data.... Read more →

Mainly Pros and a Few Cons with B2B Web Research

Acquiring current and accurate B2B data can be difficult from data suppliers. They tend to be good for senior positions, but problems arise if you want positions lower than this or you want contacts in niche segments. Whatever you’re looking for, currency will be a problem. Is the contact that you were supplied current? Some vendors have current data but many do not. To be honest, it’s not easy to keep B2B data current with job mobility at 11-15% per year, a lot of maintenance is required to keep a database current. It’s worth commissioning your own web research. The... Read more →

Buying Data – The Un-Natural Process – Caveat Emptor

Recently I was asked to source some data for a client, and after engaging the main data suppliers, I chose a vendor I trusted. I’ve purchased data many times, so I wasn’t expecting this result. Well you can imagine I wasn’t too happy to find over 60% of the contacts supplied where no longer at their stated organisations. Now 60% is very high. With B2B data degrading at 10-22% per annum depending on which industry, I was expecting 1 in 10 or at worst case 1 in 5 contacts to be out of date (the latter case is what I... Read more →

9 Most Popular Data Quality Charts (Part 3)

In the last two blog posts we focused on these six reports: Seven Dimensions of Data Quality Data Quality Trends Duplicate Trends Company Level Capture Team or Departmental Level Capture Individual Level Capture If you didn’t get a chance to read Part 1 or Part 2, here are the links 9 Most Popular Data Quality Charts (Part 1) 9 Most Popular Data Quality Charts (Part 2) In today's post we look at three more important charts that all companies should look at, namely: Data Degradation Information Quality Profiling Data Degradation Chart I can't stress enough how important data degradation is.... Read more →

9 Most Popular Data Quality Charts (Part 2)

Last week we looked at three charts most often requested by clients, charts that are very useful in managing your business’ data quality. If you didn’t get a chance to read Part 1, here’s a link 9 Most Popular Data Quality Charts (Part 1) 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... Read more →

9 Most Popular Data Quality Charts (Part 1)

I don’t know about you, but when I receive a lengthy business report I always have a feeling of ‘oh no!’ I’ll admit it, I love looking at charts and diagrams…I feel I can see the right questions to ask immediately…what the chart shows and what the chart doesn’t show. I can then decide to read the report or seek answers elsewhere. When you’re busy, this has to be the best way to see information. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is never truer when analysing data quality results. In this first of 3 posts, I’m going to briefly... Read more →