News
 Could
an International Thief Be Robbing Your Business?
One sure-fire way to protect your most important
asset.
By Bob Hull
It happens to every
company every day: A malevolent entity prowls your
most important asset – your customer database – and
methodically destroys your contact data. It’s a
global problem that takes place in the United
States, Canada, England, Germany, France, Japan and
every other country with a data-driven economy. Data
deterioration is the culprit and there’s no way to
stop it—but you can correct it.
Every day your contact data deteriorates. Some
estimate that it goes bad at a rate of 2 percent to
3 percent per month. How? People move, get married,
divorced, change names and then they die. You can’t
protect your data from that. It happens and you need
to make corrections. Then, if it goes uncorrected
for a year, 25 percent to 35 percent of your contact
data will be bad and that could cost your company
hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars each month.
Sometimes data doesn’t deteriorate; it’s bad from
the beginning. Human error is another big factor
when it comes to bad data. A customer may transpose
information when filling out an online form or an
employee may do the same when taking an order, but
you can guard your business from errors at point of
entry.
Bad data also comes from your international
customers who may be confused by your online form,
because it isn’t formatted properly for their
country. They struggle to enter the information
they’re used to providing, but it’s like forcing
square pegs into round holes—when you upload it into
your database it’s corrupt from the beginning. That
can be overcome as well.
According to The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI),
bad data costs businesses in the United States more
than $600 billion every year. How many more billions
do you think it costs when you add in the loss from
all the other countries? More importantly, how much
of that is your company’s money?
If you use the postal system in any country, email
or telecommunications, then bad data is an issue
that costs your company money whether you know it or
not. Bad data will waste your money on postage and
printing, it will cost you revenue from lost sales
opportunities, and it can create ill will with
customers who don’t get timely communication from
you.
How can you protect your customer database so that
the files are clean, fresh and profitable? The
answer is International Address Validation (IAV).
It’s the Interpol of the global data world. IAV can
prevent bad data from being entered into your
database and correct bad data due to the natural
deterioration process.
In future articles we’ll talk about specific ways
IAV can protect your business from bad data quality,
which may save you thousands of dollars every month.
For now, you can learn more calling 1-800-MELISSA to talk to a specialist who
can help you with an IAV solution today. Clean up
your international database – data is available for
more than 200 countries.
---Source: Bob
Hull is director of product development at Melissa
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