Erin Haselkorn

Last week, Gartner released the new 2019 Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools. The report provides an overview of the players in the space and the “key capabilities that organizations need in their tool portfolio, if they are to address the increasing importance and urgency of data quality”.

As part of the data revolution, organizations are trying to better manage and manipulate their information. They need to build a trusted data resource that they can use to generate revenue, gain a competitive advantage, and better serve their customer base.

But who is responsible for managing and manipulating that data? Who should champion that resource within the business to make sure it is used properly?

Data quality is something organizations know they need---eighty--nine percent of U.S. companies plan to make data quality solutions a priority in the next 12 months. But the question is, how do you get to a state of better data quality? What are the right solutions? Can’t data just magically appear accurate and fit for a given purpose?

In today’s data-driven economy, we all want data at our finger tips and we use it in a wide variety of ways across the business, from marketing automation, operations, consumer insights and so much more.

Organizations everywhere are looking to do more with their data assets, as well as better leverage open data and third party data sources for additional consumer insight. The good news is that there is no shortage of information available. The bad news is that wrangling and making sense of all that information can be very challenging. That is why we see 61 percent of U.S. companies stating inaccurate data is undermining their ability to provide an excellent customer experience. 

According to a new Experian Data Quality report, Investing in digital transformation: This year’s most sought-after data roles, businesses are hiring a mix of business- and regulation-focused data positions. Below is a chart showing the top roles being hired according to U.S. respondents and also c-level executives specifically. 

This morning, the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) announced that Experian is officially sponsoring the 2017 race. We are excited to share this news and to put our support behind an organization that many of our own employees have been passionate about for years. 

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Mike Delgado from Experian for a ‘Data Talk’ interview. We chatted about the 2017 Global Data Management Benchmark Report, and you can see the video of that interview in this post. 

This week I was able to attend the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit in Dallas. For those of you who weren’t able to join this meeting of data professionals, I thought I would share a few of my key take-aways from the event.

If you’re an email marketer, chances are you have thought about the quality of your contact email list. It is one of the most important assets you have. Without an accurate list, you could end up in the spam box, with a bad sender reputation or flat out unable to reach your subscribers at all. Never fear, there are a host of vendors out on the market who are more than happy to help you validate that list and improve your email hygiene.

Information governance is not the darling of IT topics. While everyone wants to talk about data insight and analytics, very few people want to talk about the governance or regulation around data that it takes to have a successful analytics program. Without a foundational program in information governance, organizations will fail at analytics.

Marketers have a number of challenges on their plate, but one theme that continues to come up time and time again is data. This year’s Experian Marketing Services Client Summit reminded me that data is not going away any time soon. But to gain insight, marketers are going to have to get creative and think about the consumer and data more holistically.