Da Facto: On data quality

Monday, October 13, 2008

On data quality

I believe that the single easiest and more impactful thing you can do to improve your analytics is to check your data quality. Sometimes, however, ensuring quality data can have a direct impact on improving your business results. Case in point, I have a client whose business depends on the accuracy of personal information given to them by their customers. However, they did no address verification on the data; they took whatever information that was provided with out checking its accuracy. We just did a check on the quality of their data. Turns out over 20% of the people do not give accurate personal information. This is an easy fix: Put in an address verification system to make sure that at least the address they get are valid. If someone is going to make up an address, at least force them to give you a valid address. This can only make the problem better.

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