Technology Record - Issue 22: Autumn 2021

97 The implications of this are often associated with cost, agility and reputation. “Contacting people multiple times with the same offer or sending mailers to deceased people is just throwing money away,” says Farr. “Similarly, missed deliveries will incur courier costs and missed service calls can run into the thousands of pounds in some industries. But this ineffi- ciency will also erode your brand and reputation, making all those up-sell and cross-sell activities harder to close. “Agility is also affected, and we have seen this throughout the Covid-19 crisis. Contacting cus- tomers digitally and accurately became critical. In our 2021 Global data management research report, we found that 72 per cent of businesses said better data would have improved their response to the pandemic.” But there is a solution – a data quality firewall for Microsoft Dynamics 365. With this, Experian Data Quality can help its customers understand what bad data they possess and fix it. “The first thing to do is to actively intervene as the data is being entered,” says Farr. “This means providing a reference service to trusted data sources and a rapid check of the data as it is added. “Then we need to apply all these checks to existing data – taking it and scrubbing it periodically for out-of-date information and duplicates. We have now added a data quality virus scan to the firewall which updates data to reflect the real world.” With clean data as the starting point, busi- nesses can use it to enrich external data sources such as geocoding for deliveries and demo- graphic profiling for analysis. It enables them to better segment their data and solve tricky problems like delivering goods and services to non-address locations such as building sites or docking bays. But what is involved before businesses can realise the full benefits of data enrichment? “I think there are a few things to think about upfront,” says Farr. “First of all, you want to ensure that the data quality solution is fully integrated and up-to-date with the latest Microsoft standards. “Beyond that, what reference data will you need access to? Will you be doing business in one country or multiple? Are you working with consumers only or businesses too? Business names and addresses can be more complex, with multiple addresses per organisation, many of which may be located in the same physical building as many other businesses.” Read the full 2021 Global data management research report: https://bit.ly/3liZ8WW