Data Verification: Here Are Ten Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Data Verification and Validation

Introduction

Data is essential to every firm in the era, where digital transformation is at its peak. Organizations from all sectors produce, gather, and combine enormous amounts of data to understand their customers. Unfortunately, the raw data collected does not offer any insights due to errors and irrelevant entries. Having client data that is unreliable and inconsistent might also hurt your marketing efforts. Since this unprocessed- raw data cannot be trusted, this is where Data Verification and Validation Services may help!

When your database is not verified, for instance, your client database, you will send emails to invalid addresses or individuals who aren’t interested in your organization. You must avoid losing all of your efforts, resources, and time in this manner since they would be rendered useless. A verified and validated database is a solution to prevent this and gain a more significant market and consumer understanding.

Data Verification: The Concept

As businesses need data for marketing operations, they source it from various places. Data migration from multiple resources is followed by data verification, a procedure that involves examining the data for accuracy and consistency. Finding inconsistencies in the database can be done manually or automatically, leaving a clean data collection for multiple uses.

Why Data Verification?

Organizations must periodically verify their data to ensure that they have reliable data anytime they require it. Regardless of how giant or small your firm is, data verification and validation are a must. If you don’t regularly perform data quality checks, inaccuracies and improper inputs in your data can have a severe impact, leading to missed opportunities and lost money.

Benefits of Data Verification Services

  1. Enhances business decision-making: A good data verification service aids you in maintaining data quality and gives you access to more precise analytics that support making result-focused decisions and developing successful business plans.   
  2. Increases ROI: When your data is verified, it positively impacts your marketing outcomes and leads to much greater campaign response rates.           
  3. Save money and effort: By contracting out data verification services, you can eliminate inaccurate information that might impact mailing accuracy. The time and money lost from your marketing efforts are reduced as a result.
  4. Save a tonne of time and enhance productivity: When you hire experts from data verification and validation services, they can assist you in maintaining a high-quality data set, saving you time and improving productivity.
  5. Maintaining your brand’s integrity & reputation: Maintaining correct data aids in ensuring that your messages are received by the intended audience and strengthens the integrity and reputation of your brand.

Data Verification: Here Are Ten Common Pitfalls to Avoid

#1 Failing to Verify and Correct Invalid Postal Addresses

An incorrect postal address results in a negative experience when the order is delivered incorrectly or never arrives. A best practice for ensuring a positive client experience is to correct this information before it enters your systems and your distribution center for delivery.

Customers have high hopes for the delivery of their online orders. For brands to succeed, especially when competing on customer experience, they must meet or surpass these expectations.

Furthermore, in the era of global eCommerce, customers anticipate (regardless of the notion) that the correct order will always arrive on time.

#2 Failing to Verify and Correct Invalid Phone Numbers

When a business has to call a consumer, an incorrect number leads to wastage of effort, whereas a valid number is instrumental.

Imagine, for example, that your customer service department needed to send an urgent message, but the phone number was wrong. The representative must spend additional time when the response is, “You’ve dialed an incorrect number.” The person will then need to find a new phone number or a different way to contact the client. In these circumstances, by verifying and rectifying contact numbers your business will be able to communicate with clients efficiently.

#3 Failing to Verify and Correct Invalid Email Addresses

An incorrect email address can cause a higher bounce rate (message not reaching the target recipient) for email marketing, which will trouble the organization. High bounce rates put a company at risk when its reputation is at stake while emailing. In addition, improper email practices and an inadequate sender image can cause blacklisting problems; these issues are expensive and time-consuming to fix.

Any emails sent by a blacklisted company are sent to the recipient’s spam bin rather than the intended person. Given that email marketing has one of the highest returns on investments (ROIs) in the industry, it can be expensive to be unable to reach clients due to obstructed communication.

Customers anticipate regular contact in this modern era of engagement. As a result, it becomes challenging for every department of the organization to believe that the contact information they rely on is accurate as email addresses change more quickly.

#4 Keeping Poor Documentation

Not having a defined beginning point for your data validation and verification processes is the worst thing that can happen. If a team fails to establish the business requirements, they will have poor and incomplete documentation and a vague understanding of the company’s goals. One of the most frequently made mistakes is poor documentation, which may be very expensive and risky. Ensure your company’s paperwork is accurate and complete, so you know exactly what to test and how to direct your data validation and verification efforts. If not, you risk neglecting important safety concerns and industry regulations.

#5 Delaying Verifying & Validating Data at Early Stages

Processes including data validation, verification, reliability, quality assurance, and inspection, should be used in the early stages to uncover defects before data is put into the system for critical business decision-making. The expense of fixing a mistake rises over time. Initial implementation and anticipation of these processes can substantially impact the business decision and enable early error identification, ensuring business growth and development.

#6 Not Validating Your Test Tools or Methods

Ensure that all the tools you want to employ for data validation and verification are efficient. If you don’t, you will be putting the data from those procedures in danger. The same is true of your data validation and verification processes; before implementing the strategy, you must decide on the approaches and manage the databases and instructions.

#7 Employing Inexperienced Team

To ensure fair, trustworthy, and secure execution of these processes, a certain degree of independence from the data verification team is typically advised. In addition, independent verification and validation bring value to databases and other business processes needed for efficient decision-making.

#8 Not Testing the Final Database

This relates to the problem we previously mentioned, “Poor Documentation.” If you change or update the databases midstream in the process, you are most likely also altering the specifications that should be verified or validated. Therefore, the first step should be to check to see if your database has any errors or missing data. However, you should also be willing to go through the validation and verification procedures again.

#9 Lack of Independence For the Evaluator

Data validation and verification can make the difference between more cost-effective, successful business decisions and a never-ending waste of resources. Unfortunately, these processes are highly complex. Employing inexperienced teams for data verification and validation services runs the danger of wasting time and resources; the procedure alone can take months.

#10 Ignoring the Possibility of Errors

Regarding data verification and validation, a few possible errors should be ignored. We are all aware that businesses collect data from numerous resources. You might take the possibility of errors for granted. But, if such errors seep into your database, it will obstruct you from successfully utilizing this database in business operations. However, this cannot be an excuse to avoid assigning precise tasks to data validation services. Instead, ensure that the outsourcing partner is equipped with advanced technology and an experienced team of experts. You can ask them to adhere to the set data standards.

Concluding Words

Unfortunately, the saying “trash in, trash out” is true more than ever. Data-driven businesses must implement enterprising procedures to regularly evaluate and manage data quality as the volume of data grows. Otherwise, they run the danger of taking action on insights that are supported by inaccurate data. Outsourcing data validation and verification services will save you capital, time and effort. It will enhance productivity and establish a brand image. That is why outsourcing is an intelligent choice to strengthen your database.

Author Bio

Jessica is a Content Strategist, currently engaged at Data-Entry-India.com- a globally renowned data entry, management and data verification company -for over five years. She spends most of her time reading and writing about transformative data solutions, helping businesses to tap into their data assets and make the most out of them.

So far, she has written over 2000 articles on various data functions, including data entry, data processing, data management, data hygiene, and other related topics. Besides this, she also writes about eCommerce data solutions, helping businesses uncover rich insights and stay afloat amidst the transforming market landscapes.

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