Bulk Cleanup & Data Accuracy: When Data Management Gets Violent

When the Pressure’s On and the Clock Is Ticking

Now, you always want to listen to your perception of risky or tense situations. But when it comes to business data, the alarm bells always seem to be ringing for everything. Maybe it’s in the form of someone who knows less than they think they do—or on the other end, someone who wants more than is possible. Regardless, anybody who’s worked with data knows that people seem to expect the data guys to work some magic.

And speaking of the impossible…here are some tight spots you may have found yourself in: 

1. A sales manager insists on a comprehensive report analysing five years of sales data across all regions, expecting detailed insights and forecasts within a 24-hour deadline–but the CRM is in dire need of a bulk data cleanup…  
2. An executive wants to merge customer data from several outdated and incompatible databases into one, seamless system. They expect this to be done without any loss of data or downtime, not accounting for the discrepancies, duplicates, and data cleaning required.
3. After years of neglecting data quality, a company finds itself with a CRM full of duplicates, incomplete records, and outdated information. The leadership then expects the data team to clean and update everything immediately, as if pushing a magic “fix” button. 
4. Marketing wants to launch a highly personalized email campaign targeting thousands of leads with content tailored to each recipient’s previous interactions with the company. Can they hand over the interaction data? Nope! They haven’t been collecting it. But somehow, the data team can make it happen! 
5. A department has been using an unsecured spreadsheet to track critical project data and, after accidentally deleting it without any backups, turns to the IT team to recover it immediately. They expect a miracle recovery of the lost data. 
6. With a new data protection regulation coming into effect, a company suddenly realizes it’s not compliant. The data team is expected to audit, secure, and ensure compliance of all data systems three days before the regulation goes into effect, despite years of lax data practices. 

And you don’t need to be a data specialist to get thrown into the fire! As long as you’re handling the data, you could be in the hotseat.

Real-Time Validation vs Bulk Data Cleanup

In these cases, the goal is to improve existing data (or in number 5, retrieve it from the void). When it comes to data that’s been sitting with the business, the best way forward is always prevention. For the most part, pre-set daily routines and the right data software can help people settle in and understand what the data team needs from them so they can do their job. It’s all about making things easy to do for the rest of the team, because while data management can be sexy, the reality is that it isn’t for most…yet. 

But the immediate solution to cleansing that data would be to find a software that could just sit on the data team’s desktop and then cleanse the data in batches. This would make it easier to go through massive databases with a million fields to go through, whittling away at dead data, incorrect information, and duplicates within batches and between batches until everything is as good as new! 

Alternatively, a real-time and cloud-based solution may be the more appropriate product for the job. This handy tool can ensure your data stays accurate and clean as it’s entered.

Every year, organizations lose around $12.9 million on average due to poor data quality. But not sure where to start? Book a consultation with one of our Data Quality Specialists today, and let’s see how we can make address validation seamless for you.