Look after your data and your data will look after you

Monday, 19th May 2014

Categories: Data

The data you have is very valuable; it’s the glue that makes possible the key relationships that make your business operate. Who orders what products or services, how and when they billed, when they pay, where they are, how to contact them etc. etc. Imagine running your business without having any data.

So look after it.

One aspect of looking after your data is to keep it up-to-date. There are four things you can do to help keep your data as up to date as possible.

• Make sure your data is backed up once a week as a minimum – ideally daily.  And make sure the file name protocols you use make it easy to identify the latest version of the data.
• Whenever you send a communication ask customers if their details are correct. Make it easy for them to make amendments  and if possible offer a direct email or telephone they can use
• Allow customers to make changes to their address data once they are logged into their account – it could be more than just the address, it could include additional contact names and numbers
• Invest in professional cleansing and maintenance including checks against mailing list preferences, deceased databases etc

Finally – make sure you limit access to your customer data. It’s valuable and should be treated as a real asset. Only those at a senior level should be able to download or amend your customer data, and very few should have the ability to download.

Look out for the next data blog on data entry – another important factor in making sure your data is looked after.

Author: Gamze Bilgili