Outsource Data Cleansing; Not Only Gives Useful Information but Also Helps in Legal Compliances

Businesses, small or large, are required to process humongous amount of data almost every day. Though data cleansing seems to be a simple task, it includes giving due diligence to duplicate entries, partial records, discrepancies, and errors and a lot more. Outsourced data cleansing service providers assist you to maintain efficient and effective information; your company’s most valued asset. Some stunning statistics:

• • • • Every 6th minute in an hour, there is a business which moves from one to another location
      • Some or the other business fails in the world, every 4th minute
      • Business and employee details change to the tune of 5.7 billion, each year
      • Business information becomes incorrect in tune to 35% of the total information available
      • More than 14 million mobile numbers & names are already registered with Telephone Preference Service (TPS)
      • More than 1 billion businesses are registered with Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS)

So, if any of the numbers mentioned above, can effect or impact your business; please read on.

What businesses need today is to get rid of outdated and expired and incomplete data. And this is not all, as it cannot be a onetime activity. Instead, what you exactly need is a predictive way to plug in missing values in your data and performs several progressive analytics clubbed with this data cleansing process or activity. It is a common sight where your in-house business data analysts are busy preparing and mending data, to have it handy in a ready to use format, before they actually can get to analyzing it for preparing reports that can help your decision-making process.

Usually, this activity is called data cleansing or data scrubbing, and it comprises of two major activities.

• Uniformity, where data is formatted as decimal numbers in a uniform manner; then is organized in preferred structures for further analysis. This is the first activity.
• Consistency, this is at times the most challenging and second phase or part of the data cleansing activity. Making the data consistent; means having all data points in place, rectifying incomplete or inappropriate data points, and lastly normalizing them for uniformity.

Uniformity and consistency, clubbed with data cleansing, helps your expiring data & poor leads. Data cleansing service providers identify and rectify the enlisted to make your data give out required information:

• • • • Uniqueness
      • Misspellings
      • Redundancy/duplicates
      • Contradictory values
      • Naming conflicts
      • Structural conflicts
      • Inconsistent aggregating
      • Inconsistent timing
      • Illegal values
      • Missing values
      • Varying value representations

However; apart from all these, data cleansing service providers help you with legal compliances, which if not addressed stringently could lead you to penalties.

Various countries are putting in place laws and rules to protect businesses and even individuals, against unwarranted marketing messages and phone calls. Drawn straight from European law, and falling in line with Data Protection Act, these are remarkably highlighted in the "The Privacy and Electronics Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (PECR)". Direct marketing inclusions made in PECR, are Email, Fax, Phone, Text or any other kind of "electronic mail". These rules differ for B2B and B2C marketing.

So holistically everything boils down to one thing and that is; businesses, enterprises, companies whoever, and is required to use the correct data. I.e. while conducting telemarketing campaigns, you as a marketer are not supposed to get in touch with someone whose number is on the TPS – telephone Reference service, or CTPS - corporate Telephone Preference Service. A fine of up to £500,000 from the ICO can be levied on breaching any of these rules.

Conclusion:

Data cleansing service providers help you with correct and clean data in a ready to use format. These service providers from India, eventually keep your existing as well as potential customer information correct, while enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales & marketing campaigns and teams. Upon asked for, they can even enhance your data quality by aligning it to relative data from search engines for attributes like eCommerce platforms and what not.

Chirag Shivalker heads the digital content for Hi-Tech BPO, an India based firm recognized for the leadership and ability to execute innovative approaches to data management.