Data Cleansing & De-DupingEven if a pristine CRM database is created, it will not remain so unless the CRM system prevents errors from occurring. If the CRM system cannot identify and eliminate or prevent duplicate records from the database, data quality will decrease over time4. Alarmingly, the rate of decline is thought to be as much as 3% per month5. This type of problem can lead, for example, to a business sending out multiple mailings to the same customer, because the address is listed in two, or more, different ways6. This immediately proves to the customer that they have just received a mass mailing and that your in-house systems are inadequate – not good!Ongoing data cleansing is essential. Changes in name, phone and address details, divorces, births and deaths etc that occur within a company’s contact database on a daily basis, quickly results in bad data7. This poor data is costly. In fact, the Data Warehousing Institute estimates that poor quality data costs U.S. businesses more than $600 billion each year7. The Gartner Group is equally discouraging – it believes that 25% of critical data within the Fortune 1000 companies was inaccurate in 20077. Commentators have stated that part of the problem is that CRM enables and encourages access to the database across the enterprise. While conceivably a benefit, the potential for errors increases exponentially with each additional person who enters or uses the data – all because the underlying CRM code structures do not recognize and prevent duplicate records7. Consequently, a new industry in CRM data integration, cleansing and management has now been created as a result of the inherent inadequacies of CRM. Additional software can now be purchased (at a hefty cost) to identify duplicate records. This industry would be superfluous but for the fundamental logic flaws inherent in CRM systems. [4] Rybeck N., “The Bane of CRM: Data Quality”, www.dmreview.com/dmdirect/20040625/1005619-1.html [5] Glance K. “Data: The dirtiest four-letter word in CRM”, 30 July 2004, www.searchcrm.techtarget.com [6] Krill P., “CRM plagued by data quality issues”, 5 October 2001, www.infoworld.com/articles [7] Glance K. “Data: The dirtiest four-letter word in CRM”, 30 July 2004, www.searchcrm.techtarget.com |
