How Data Quality Impacts Your Business

In today's business world, organizations are becoming data-driven more than ever before. Nowadays, organizations generate enormous volume of data from multiple sources or channels. Thus, the level of complexity of managing these data has increased. Businesses makes decisions every day. Employees are constantly processing information and making choices. People strive to make the best decisions possible, which is why most decision makers rely on data to support their strategies. Data Quality plays a vital role in decision making process in business. Poor data quality can potentially have significantly negative impacts on the company. Hence, it is imperative to ensure good quality data to support effective decision making.

Poor data quality leads to negative consequences such as less customer satisfaction, and ineffective decision-making process which ultimately affects the organization's revenue negatively.

The factors which determine the quality of data are comprehensiveness, accuracy, validity, reliability and timeliness. Data should be accurate, accessible within a suitable time frame to avoid project delays and it should be enriched with reliable information. 

One of the major causes of data quality problems is poor choices of data collection methods. The most common method to collect data for market research purposes is through survey. The method which an organization chooses to conduct a survey can have a significant impact on the survey results. Another common problem is the inevitable human error during data collection process. In order to ensure good survey data quality and integrity, it is crucial to have a systematic quality assurance process, and also improve on all the major factors of data quality. The following are key factors which impacts businesses.

Data comprehensiveness

Quantifying data and regarding it to be complete due to its quantity is not an effective strategy in data collection. In order to determine the comprehensiveness and the completion of data, the information contained within the data must meet the business requirements.  It has a profound effect on the generation of revenue and leads.

Data Accuracy

Data accuracy is of utmost importance. It has a vast effect on the entire working on the organization because inaccurate data can affect the operations, the leads, revenues, sales and the overall success. Strong and effective data solutions must be utilized to evaluate the quality of data. Accurate data aids in controlling the customer experience, in making business decisions and it also supports a holistic view of the customers. 

Validity of data

Data may contain a lot of numbers and information and that can bedazzle businesses. However, with effective data collection tools, the quality of data can be enhanced. Several factors to consider is to utilize tools or software for data validation check. Establish validation rules such as requiring "@" when filling out an email address or enforce mandatory fields which forbids respondent to proceed or complete if a certain field is left blank. This rules the possibility of the incorporation of invalid data which may affect the business outcome. For instance, a company tries to gather customer feedback as an effort to improve customer satisfaction. However, the survey result turns out to have a lot of invalid information entered, and there was plenty of respondents who did not fill out certain form such as "hobbies" or "interest". Such data is incomplete and the organization loses such tremendous opportunities in prospecting leads who are most likely to make purchases. Another possible cause is synchronization issue. If a company gathers data from multiple different channels, there are several factors which needs to be taken into consideration, such as different data formats, and how should data across different systems be synchronized.

Quality of data

An efficient strategy used for collecting responses is to survey data quality. However, it should be noted that the quantity of responses does not provide accurate results necessarily. Rather, the quality of response can ensure better precision of data.

For performing smooth marketing execution, there is a strong need for data correlation.  However, correlating a large amount of data can cause inevitable human errors. Reducing the errors in data can significantly hike up the quality of data. In order to meet the demands of customer-centric market of today, data intelligence must be applied. Information about what customers need from a business is much sought-after. To enhance the data intelligence, accuracy and completeness of data are the key tenets that are needed.

All in all, it is crucial to ensure that an organization optimizes data completeness, consistency, validity, accuracy, and timeliness. All these factors will determine the quality of data that will be used for business operations, to develop strategies and make decisions. It is highly advised to utilize a proper data collection tools. the platform has advanced features such as artificial intelligence and real-time monitoring system to ensure data transparency. Performing good data practices through enhanced data collection tools, survey design methodology, and optimal data analysis helps to ensure in achieving data collection process, thus producing well-informed business decisions.