Data Cleansing – Why It’s Necessary and How to Get Started

Data is a valuable asset to the organization. Data helps in creating market intelligence and benefits the company by gathering information about the customers and the market. The data changes over some time as details get updated. This makes the data outdated and needs to be removed and replaced with the correct data. This requires data cleansing which is of tremendous values as unclean data may cause complications. Poor data quality can harm the growth of the company as faulty data models lead to poor decision making. Data experts know the importance of data cleansing services as skilled people spend a large portion of their time in cleaning and collecting.

Data Cleansing

Here are some bad effects of poor-quality Data Cleansing :

Damaged Reputation

In this digital age, competition is extremely high and companies cannot compromise on their reputation in the market. The use of low-quality and wrong data can lead to reputation damage. For example, in the finance sector, the use of wrong data can seriously affect the customer’s hard-earned money. This affects the company’s reputation too. Outsourcing data cleansing services ensure quality data consistently. This improves the customer’s confidence which improves the business.

Wrong Decision Making

The result obtained from data analytics is useful if the good data is sent in. If the data is bad and doesn’t give the actual picture, then the analytics is flawed and lead to wrong decision making. For example, if the data analysis system is giving wrong data regards to customers geographical location then the company would be wasting money in targeting customers who are not even using the service. If companies outsource data cleansing services, then such matters are taken care of initially so that wrong data is not sent for analysis.

Poor Growth

Incorrect data could prevent a business analysis and then stop the firm from developing a particular product. These are all factors that the competitor will take advantage of and expand their business. Once the business outsources data cleansing, they get an upper hand over the competitors as they would be ready with the analysis before the competitors and so have a better chance.

Decrease in Revenue

The poor data resources would be a financial burden and the quality would decrease the revenue.The information extracted from the data is as good as the data that is being collected and entered into the system. So, it is important to understand the process and how to start with it. The steps of cleansing data are as given below:

1.Planning the Strategy

Implementing a data cleaning strategy starts with the data collection. Companies competent in cleansing data services think about this from the beginning and try to incorporate maximum data collection methods.

2.Standardize and Automate

Standardization is where the maximum business is at fault. The organization needs to agree upon the rules of standardization, this process takes several months, but once the standardizing process is over the same method can be applied to bring in speed. The governance policies and rules also need to be taken into account according to the business.

3.Add and Integrate Systems

One system cannot collect everyday data. Each layer of the data cleansing process should be checked, and attention should be given to the integration of the systems. Data stack which is created post-integration should be uniform. Data cleansing service providers can use tools to deliver better results.

4.Different Tools

There are tools available to clean data and strategize in the best possible way. Microsoft Excel has many options in this regard and many other tools working on automated software.All these basic steps simplify the process of data cleaning and give organizations clean data without much of trouble. Outsourcing data cleansing gives a confident approach towards data for deep and operational insight as the data is accurate and reliable.