What is data quality management?

Put most simply, data quality management is the process of reviewing and updating your customer data to minimize inaccuracies and eliminate redundancies, such as duplicate customer records and duplicate mailings to the same address.

In our data-driven era, the ability of a company or organization to successfully acquire, retain, and communicate with customers depends entirely on the quality of data.

Inaccurate home addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers lead to missed communications and may incur fines when you inadvertently contact individuals who do not want to be on your mailing, phone, or email lists. If your understanding of the demographics of your potential and current customers is incorrect, you will create marketing campaigns that are not properly targeted to your clients and suffer from a much lower return on investment (ROI) than if your communications were based on accurate demographic information.

Ensuring that your customer data is current and correct is a task that no company or organization can neglect if it wants to succeed in the long run. That is where data quality management comes in.

Data management requires the proper planning, tools, and people for its success. Putting together a comprehensive data quality management plan is a worthy investment of time and resources that will pay off over time. As your customer data continually improves, waste is eliminated, and marketing campaigns become more engaging and successful.

Where does data quality management occur?:

Understanding the management of customer data involves more than just answering the question, What is data management? You also need to understand the process of data acquisition and maintenance at your organization.

Acquisition of data:

Companies and organizations acquire customer data through numerous channels. In some cases, the customers themselves provide their data either over the phone or via Internet forms.

In the process of collecting data, errors can be introduced. House numbers can get transposed. ZIP codes can be entered incorrectly. Streets can be misspelled. Phone numbers can be inputted without the right area code. Wrong email addresses can make it into your system.

If not fixed, such mistakes and many others lead to miscommunications, mailing errors, and other problems. Tools such as USPS postal address validation and email verification are vital at this point in the data management process, as they can automatically correct data-entry errors and keep them from entering your system.

Maintenance of data:

Once entered in the system, customer data must be maintained. At this point, what is data quality management and what does it involve?

Essentially, you are trying to keep associates who work with the data regularly from entering errors, and you are striving to make sure that contact information changes are properly recorded so that you do not miss your customers when they move.

Data hygiene services that verify current data and check for duplications are vital at this point of data management.

Summary:

What is data management? Data quality management is the necessary task of protecting your customer data and ensuring its accuracy so that you can improve customer relations. Experian Data Quality has the industry-leading tools and experience to help you setup an effective data management plan.

Related links:

Learn more about data cleansing solutions.
Learn more about data quality.