Sometimes, the information you need just isn't there. Whether it's data created by third-party services or by institutions, it's quite possible to aggregate it and integrate it into a dataset.
You can find the missing information by retrieving it from partners, purchasing it from external suppliers or making it available as self-service open data. Whichever method you use, you need to ensure the quality of the exported data.
What's more, when retrieving external data, it's important that this data can be easily integrated with other existing information. With Tale of Data, you can find all your data organized and standardized in a single place, enabling all collaborators to enrich it later.
What are the different processes involved in cleaning up your data with Tale of Data?
There are several steps to the data preparation process: with the Tale of Data platform, you can first cleanse and consolidate your various sources of information to create a new data set. However, we'd like to remind you of a few crucial steps in data cleansing.
Data integration to enrich your data
You need to integrate your data directly onto the Tale of Data platform by connecting your data sources. This saves time and eliminates the need for manual extractions.
Data profiling
This is an essential step in data cleansing. Data profiling enables you to assess the quality of your data, and identify any problems or errors in the rows of your dataset. In other words, data profiling involves analyzing the content of a data source in advance, to ensure that it is up to the task of further processing.
What do we need to clean up in the data before enriching it?
We do what we call dirty data profiling. Generally speaking, the raw data internally is imperfect. This means correcting spelling mistakes and format inconsistencies, deleting all unnecessary or misleading punctuation marks, invalid e-mails, dealing with missing information (NAN), and so on.
To spot these problems, we need to "clean" the data and see what types of data make up the rows and columns of the dataset. This is a crucial step, because without it, the enrichment process cannot proceed smoothly.
How are duplicate data handled?
If you're consolidating data from different sources, it's highly likely that you'll notice some duplication. The first thing to do is to compare existing data to eliminate duplicates. It is highly advisable to use a technological solution to help you with this type of processing. Our Tale of Data platform enables you to perform a data audit to deduplicate and merge data. Indeed, duplicate data is problematic, as it hinders future data processing. Nor can they be properly exploited, since they are unreliable.
What is a merge purge function?
For successful data enrichment, a merge purge of the data is essential to obtain a single version of the data. Merge purging is a process that brings multiple data sources together in one place. At the same time, it removes duplicates, unnecessary fields and records. If you don't want to waste time purging data by hand in Excel, for example, Tale of Data is an efficient solution that lets you create a single source of truth. It overwrites old records with new data. What's more, it's an easy-to-use tool that doesn't require you to be a computer programming professional.
Why do we talk about data survival?
As the final stage in the enrichment process, data survival refers to the final creation of a single, reliable file containing only cleaned, usable information. This file can then be used for future enrichment purposes.
Is it important to keep your database up to date?
Once your data set is clean and reliable, you need to think about feeding the data stream on a regular basis. It's a question of animating and nourishing it by assigning people to do this, using appropriate tools. This work has become essential, as consumer behavior is increasingly variable, and their situations and needs change. That's why it's necessary to keep information up to date by enriching the data source. This is also known as "information watch", to ensure that data is available in real time. Similarly, as you progress towards your objectives, you'll need to flesh out your data sources even further.
What are the reasons why companies need to enrich their data?
Enrichment means adding value to data.
Data enrichment increases the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Indeed, data can represent a formidable source of targeted traffic and qualified leads. Another opportunity is to offer an autocomplete service in online registration forms. Different results are then automatically proposed to users to fill in the various fields of a form. With enriched data, you'll be able to better segment your prospects and develop more personalized communication plans according to different profiles. You'll get better interaction with your prospects, and a higher conversion rate as a result.
Enriched data greatly helps sales reps to better convert customers. With more relevant and complete information at their fingertips, sales reps can more easily adapt their pitch and approach to each customer. In fact, he'll be able to develop a more polished and targeted sales pitch that better meets the customer's needs.
Qualitative data also helps to improve customer knowledge in general. What's more, if this data is regularly updated, it creates serious advantages in the company/customer relationship. The latter can anticipate customer needs and react quickly to changes in consumer buying behavior.
Open data enrichment in a nutshell
In conclusion, enriching your data enables you to develop strategies that are as close to the market as possible, and to better control your costs. But if you want your data enrichment to be a real success, don't forget that data quality is the key! For more details on the enrichment features of our solution, please consult our page dedicated to the subject: enriching your data with Tale of Data.
