Melissa UK Team | United Kingdom

Triggered mainly by the growth in energy prices due to the conflict in Ukraine inflation is still hovering at around ten per cent – with a significant fall not expected anytime soon. As a result, costs for many businesses have not only spiralled rapidly but remain at a high level, leaving them concerned about their future.

To remain competitive many organisations are considering making some tough decisions regarding their outgoings. However, before making any big cuts they need to ask the question – have they thought through improvements they can make in their back office using the appropriate technology?

Technology can play a vital role in helping businesses to save money and improve performance, and therefore remain competitive during these inflationary times. This is particularly the case when it comes to technology that ensures the delivery of accurate customer data, because of the value it provides in reducing inflationary pressures.

Data quality issues

Obtaining accurate data and maintaining up-to-date databases are big issues, with 91 per cent of organisations experiencing common data quality problems. This is not surprising when customer contact data degrades at around 25 per cent a year without regular intervention. Also, 20 per cent of addresses entered online contain errors, such as spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, or incorrect postcodes, mainly caused by people mistyping their details via their mobile devices.

The end result is inaccurately targeted communications and deliveries, meaning precious budgets are wasted. Also, customers have a poor experience, which has a negative impact on their retention. Additionally, any learnings from inaccurate data will be incorrect, and significantly, having incorrect data encourages fraud.

The answer is to use technology that ensures contact data is not only collected accurately at the customer onboarding stage but can regularly check, clean and enhance held customer data. This will have a big impact on any organisation’s bottom line and help to mitigate the inflationary pressures they are under. However, for it to be effective, it’s important to ensure the technology sourced has access to billions of up-to-date global consumer records from reputable third parties, such as government agencies, credit agencies and utility companies.

You can find out more about What is Data Quality here.

Address Autocomplete

A good place to start is to use an address autocomplete or lookup service which enables address validation – something that also helps to deliver ID verification. These tools can gather accurate address data in real-time at the onboarding stage by providing a properly formatted, correct address as the user begins to input theirs. It also enables the delivery of a standout service by reducing the number of keystrokes required, by up to 81 per cent, when typing an address. This speeds up the onboarding process and reduces the probability of the consumer not completing a purchase.

You can find out more about What is Address Autocomplete here.

Use a fuzzy matching tool to deduplicate data

Duplicate data is commonly caused when two departments merge their data, or data has been collected via different touchpoints and then not checked for duplicates or mistakes over a long period. Having duplicate data is both costly in monetary wise and reputation. It adds cost in terms of time and money, particularly with duplicate printed communications, the distribution of which can adversely impact the sender’s reputation. Those who receive it will see this as a waste of money and resources at what is a challenging time. To avoid this, source an advanced fuzzy matching tool to deduplicate data and create a unified record for customers. It’s something that will also reduce the potential for fraud.

You can find out more about What is Data Deduplication here.

Data cleansing

To also save money and protect your reputation undertaking data suppression, or data cleansing, is very important. Data suppression and cleansing tools highlight those who have moved – commonly called goneaways – or are otherwise no longer at the address on your database. Additionally, suppression services that include deceased flagging ensure mail and other communications are not sent to those who have passed away, upsetting their friends and relatives

You can find out more about What is Data Cleansing here.

SaaS data cleaning platform

It’s never been easier or more cost-effective to manage data quality in real time. Today, Melissa’s Unison licence provides access to a scalable data cleaning software as a service (SaaS) platform that requires no code, integration or training. Simply plug in and benefit, immediately. This technology instantly cleanses and corrects names, addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers worldwide. It matches records in real-time, ensuring there is no duplication and delivers data profiling to help identify issues for further action. With inflation not expected to drop significantly anytime soon it’s time for organisations to ensure that their customer data is cleaned on an ongoing basis, using technology which has access to billions of contemporary global consumer records. Only then will it be possible to improve customer communications, deliveries and overall experience, which in turn will drive customer revenue, whilst avoiding fraud. This way data cleaning technology will play a critical role in offsetting increased costs in other areas of the business, helping organisations to remain competitive and profitable during these challenging times