Data quality and governance are critical for business operations because every department relies on accurate data for decision-making. Consistent information directly impacts organization-wide decisions.
I have observed the impact of effective data quality and governance during a collaboration with a client whose products and services were essential to large, data-driven organizations, resulting in broad recognition and adoption.
However, it is concerning that many organizations still face challenges with data quality and governance, even though effective solutions exist for many of them. I want to illustrate this with the example of a hotel chain that was unable to accommodate a change.
A Practical Case in Point
During a three-night stay at a major hotel chain, an airline rescheduling required me to split the nights between two different locations within the same chain.
The manager couldn’t change my reservation because the chain lacked a unified database.
He canceled my last night, advising me to book the final night separately, risking a lost sale.
As a result, I secured alternative accommodations for the third night.
Siloed Data affects Quality & Governance
Many departments and systems share common data, but in most cases, information remains siloed, as the above example shows, leading to costly, dissatisfied customer outcomes, as well as lost opportunities and sales for the organization.
As a few examples:
- Sales systems, such as the CRM, serve as the central repository for data about a company’s prospects, partners, customers, leads, opportunities, and sales.
- Marketing systems may contain prospect and customer data in their automation platform. Campaigns might run through this software, while newsletters use a separate email application.
- HR manages employee data in its systems.
- Finance handles employee and customer information.
- Operations also manages customer information.
- Product divisions manage data on partners and products.
- Customer service manages customer data.
The main challenge is ensuring data consistency and achieving a unified view of the customer across various systems after many years of data growth.
Consider instances where John Doe in the CRM and Jon Doe in the marketing automation solution refer to the same individual. Similarly, J Doe and John D may represent the same prospect across sales, marketing, product, and customer databases. How can data be standardized across all systems and ensure that it is current, accurate, and consistent?
Situations can also arise that put a company in an awkward position for brand building. For example, what if a customer receives a prospecting call or a prospect receives a customer product survey email?. These can be embarrassing scenarios for a company when noticed by a prospective customer or partner. The importance of clean data cannot be underestimated.
Many organizations still address these challenges, and in numerous cases, questions persist.
But before anyone cleans the data, rules and standards must be agreed upon and enforced to ensure consistency rather than chaos.
How to Keep Data Clean & Governed
Here are six ways to keep data clean and properly governed:
One: Create guidelines for entering contact details, such as names and emails, for all new contacts.
Two: Share guidelines across departments so all systems follow consistent customer data conventions.
Three: Integrate data across all systems as technology advances for consistency.
Four: Keep employees up to date on changes to guidelines, conventions, and system integrations. Communicate updates regularly so employees always have the information needed to keep data clean and consistent.
Five: Provide comprehensive training on guidelines and conventions for employees. Offer both introductory and refresher sessions. Use interactive workshops and scenario-based exercises to reinforce correct data entry and maintenance practices.
Six: Maintain data integrity across all systems through periodic maintenance checks.
In an AI world, movement is at lightning speed. In the data quality and governance world, your unclean data can become a liability more quickly than you think. The best way to avoid the many situations outlined in this post is to address data quality and governance and take action.
Elisa Ciarametaro, Principal at Exceed Sales, Inc., offers sound sales suggestions that make an impactful difference and better sales outcomes to individual contributors, managers, and executives in sales, sales development, marketing, and customer service. To learn more about Elisa Ciarametaro get more information at www.exceedsales.com, sign up for our newsletter, call Elisa at 917 653 0125, email elisac@exceedsales.com or follow her on LinkedIn.