Global data quality and management is a growing challenge for any company that markets products and services overseas. It’s more than language and alphabet barriers that must be overcome. Consider, for instance, that there are more than 130 formats for postal addresses of a worldwide company’s customers.
Marketers wonder what are the real issues in global data quality. Is it people? A plethora of different processes? Too many tools and systems? A failure to bridge a global vs. local gap? Lack of control? Too much – or too little – centralization? All of the above?
To find out, we at Harte-Hanks profiled 102 companies with international data. Respondents reported that their most important current data quality challenges were data accuracy and address quality, followed by key field completeness, data recency, and removal of duplicates. When asked to rate the quality of data, less than 45% rated overall quality as “good” or “very good.” Less than 35% rated usability of data and completeness of data as “good” or “very good.”
The study also revealed a trend to centralize multinational contact and customer data to achieve three major benefits: improved cost-effectiveness; improved marketing impact through better data quality; and more-effective use of corporate data. Many anticipated a greater use of databases in the coming year but also warned that business results would be compromised unless there was first an understanding of the need to invest in global data quality.
Global data quality best practices require a consistent, measurable approach that can handle both complexity and diversity. At the same time, local knowledge, combined with the right technology integrated with a centralized team, enables flexibility while reducing costs.
For example, if my catalog markets in some combination of Asia-Pacific, European, Latin American, and North American markets, I may choose to keep a single database, but I will also make sure that local data quality expertise is applied in all places. This will help to ensure that company activity derived from those data “knows” how to interpret prospect and customer data accurately, based on geography, and knows how to present communication to customers in a culturally meaningful and appropriate way no matter where worldwide.
Privacy and security come with their own sets of concerns. Local legislation with respect to data, data protection, and direct marketing vary widely. In business-to-business, poor data quality and analysis can lead to inconsistent and inappropriate treatment of international customers. What’s more, these problems can be tougher to correct down the line: Inaccurate data can create additional issues by perpetuating poor data input and ignoring critical data processes.
A practical approach to global data quality is to assess the scale of your company’s data and information quality problems and identify improvement opportunities through data audit and information quality review. You can then build global data quality solutions upon existing tool sets, processes, and expertise to create a comprehensive, high-quality, global view of customers. Never forget that data quality is a means to an end: better direct marketing, no matter where a marketer’s customers.
Robert Howells is managing director, international, for Harte-Hanks, a San Antonio, TX-based provider of direct marketing services.