Although a small business can become profitable, the financial results will be affected negatively because of bad data. For the same reason, cleansing is an important process. If you want to boost your infrastructure and improve the customers’ experience, the next steps are essential!
1.Understand the current situation
The first step of any type of change is to create a plan. When you want to cleanse data, it’s critical to determine accuracy and completeness. You should notice technical errors as well and where they’re coming from. This is how you find the incorrect or corrupt information that needs to be addressed. Although fixing the entire environment is not simple, things are much clearer after you understand what you’re dealing with.
2.Search for duplicate data
When it comes to contact records, duplicates might create issues. Entries appearing multiple times can ruin split tests and lead to the wrong analytics. The good news is you can find duplicates in the database and remove them pretty easily. All you have to do is to run a script that automatically detects and resolves these anomalies. Another option is to enforce columns to be unique whenever it’s possible. If you identify duplicate records, you will save time when running marketing and sales campaigns.
3.Find irrelevant information
Most of the data needs updates to be relevant. In other words, sometimes you should filter outdated entries. This can be done in a bulk process for existing records by using a specialized software. You don’t have to worry about doing it manually, because this would take too much time and won’t be so efficient.
4.Handle missing data
Usually, missing values are caused by online forms that were not filled out completely. For instance, it happens when you let the customers answer specific questions but don’t force them to complete everything. Other reasons can be updates and tables which are changed. Consider the category of missing data to find the right process for this problem. Deleting the value is not always the best approach. However, what you can do is to replace the data with a different value.
5.Validate data
Once you’ve followed the above steps and cleansed the database, you must validate the accuracy of the information. Ignoring this means you risk having mistakes and there will be consequences in the future. After data is monitored, scrubbed for duplication and updated, you will have a realistic picture of the current stage and you’ll know what needs to be done further.
Why is data the core of your small business?
Clean data represents a good foundation for any company, since the high quality information allows you to have a greater insight. As a result, the business delivers a superior customer experience and can gain competitive advantages. If you need help with data cleansing, choose Boardana.com platform to get a better ROI from your marketing efforts.
