Acuate Data Quality

Direct Marketing ROI

Do you want to understand the true value of your data, explained through a simple yet compelling calculation? Check out the video below. Contact Acuate for your FREE, no obligation data audit. Read more →

Tracking Missing Contacts is a Sales Opportunity

If you have a business relationship with someone and they leave their company, then you lose that connection and potentially future business. But there’s an opportunity here, an opportunity to create TWO new relationships: a relationship with the company they moved to and a relationship with the person who has replaced them. Anyone who is in sales knows that following people that you have a relationship with can turn into new opportunities, and finding their replacement is an opportunity to forge a new relationship with new possibilities. The most common scenario is that contacts change jobs and your relationship with... Read more →

Why Address Data is Needed More Than Ever

For many years, when you mentioned data cleansing everyone thought of cleaning addresses. The rapid deployment of address management software in 1990s and 2000s meant that wherever you went, you were asked to enter your postcode and then your first line of the address. (The world learnt to enter addresses backwards!) The last decade has seen more solutions with international address cleansing and the integration into new technologies. So, the world’s addresses have got better, postal authorities now provide definitive datasets for their addresses and it’s a normal expectation to have address capture and management software everywhere. But many saw... 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 →

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 →

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 →

5 Things to Know About International Address Cleansing

I was thinking about international addresses and what should Marketers, CRM Managers, Data Analysts and anyone working with data should know about international addresses cleansing. I came up with 5 features that best illustrate some of the complexity around international addresses and will help you understand this type of data better. This article isn’t about all the differing address formats from around the world (there’s plenty of information on the web about this), but about the issues you may face when evaluating who to use when cleansing international addresses. These are just some of things you should note: 1. What!... Read more →

International Addressing With Confidence

Before we look at specific international address issues, there is one distinction worth noting: the difference between an address found in a Postal Address File (PAF) and one that is mailable (i.e. one that will arrive at its correct destination).In this article we explore some of the common problems of international addressing and introduce a few methods on how best to manage them. Read more →