No matter what type of data you work with, data quality is vital to the success of your organization. According to a New York Times report, 50 to 80% of data scientists spend the majority of their time arranging irrelevant and chaotic data, before it can be used by the business organizations’ (source). 

When it comes to data handling, a lot of things can go wrong and waste your precious time. In order to perform data analytics efficiently, it is important to use a data cleansing process.

Effective data cleaning will not only save you busy working hours but will also ensure that your data is reliable. But what is it, and why is it so important – read on to find out.

What is data cleaning?

Data cleaning is the first and early step in the data analytics process. This crucial exercise involves validating all the present data within a database to either erase or format information that is erroneous or duplicated. Data cleaning is not just a case of removing incorrect data, although that’s often part of it. The majority of the work is to discover a way to enhance your dataset’s accuracy. 

 It is an important step in preparing data for analysis, reporting, or other purposes. Data cleaning can be a time-consuming process, but it is necessary to ensure that data is accurate and reliable. There are a number of tools and techniques that can be used for data cleansing, and the best approach will vary depending on the type of data involved.

Related: What You Need To Do To Refresh Your B2B Contact Database

Why is data cleaning important? 

On average, B2B data decays at around 35% per annum (source). Hence data cleaning is a crucial task for maintaining high-quality data. This enables you to have more accurate analytics and will eventually help you to reach your target market. Here are some key points that illustrate the importance of data cleaning. Read on to understand why cleansing your data is important for business!  

1. Improves the ROI of email campaigns

Most companies still use old data for email campaigns, but they never know that this approach can lead them to several unexpected expenses. With the data cleaning process, you can add the right people to your email list.

2. Enhances process efficiency and productivity

Data cleaning not only enhances the quality but also facilitates better decision-making. It has the overall potential to enhance your business productivity. With a clean, well-maintained database in place, organizations can rest assured that their staff members are productive during their working hours.

3. Eliminates duplicate data

Duplicate records are one of the worst problems that can plague your company’s contact database. Removing these records can often be time-consuming, and hence you need a data cleaning method to erase them. Eliminating identical data will clean up overall processes within your company and hence improves productivity. So outsourcing a data cleansing service will help your business work faster.

4. Ensures that the business is still targeting the right customers

When data starts to become old, it causes companies to target the wrong audience. Nowadays, customers’ interests are changing at such a high rate that your data can get outdated at any time. But data cleansing will automatically sort all your customer data in such a way that the newer information is prioritized. This will take care of cleaning up the outdated data in favour of fresh and updated information about your potential clients.

5. Data cleansing reduces overall costs

Having inaccurate data can fritter away your money as well as time. This can affect your mailing accuracy and eventually harms your business in numerous ways. But with the proper data cleansing plan, you will have an up-to-date data list, where you can ensure that you are contacting people that are genuinely interested in your message. This saves money and can help you to launch the right campaign. 

6. Make better business decisions 

Clean data helps businesses make the right decisions because management relies on accurate data. If data is overflowed with irrelevant information, then those same reports are not going to be as accurate as it was before. But data cleaning will erase all the inaccurate or irrelevant data and provides businesses with accurate information to make the right decisions.

An accurate and relevant database can take you to ultimate lead generation success. But having such a database is still a quite challenging task. Don’t worry! FunnL can help you build a B2B database for your business. 

We help you identify clients and businesses that are relevant to you. Contact us today to find the perfect prospect for your business!