Business intelligence is projected to grow to a nearly $26.9 billion industry by 2021, but its solutions are only as good as the data behind it. IBM determined that inaccurate data took a $3.1 trillion bite out of the U.S. economy in 2016. That’s why decision makers require spot-on data and efficient, streamlined systems to maintain it. Otherwise, they’ll end up with what I call a “rat’s nest”: dirty, duplicate, or dead information that obscures useful insights for making smart decisions.
You Can Make Your Sales Data a Lot Better with a Little Discipline
IBM determined that inaccurate data took a $3.1 trillion bite out of the U.S. economy in 2016. That’s why decision makers require spot-on data — and efficient, streamlined systems to maintain it. However, too many sales teams (and other departments) often enter data by hand, but create fresh entries instead of searching their systems and updating existing accounts, which ultimately muddies data sets. Manual data entry isn’t ideal — it can be costly, time-consuming, and open to misinterpretation. The best way to keep data clean is to use a globally known, unique identifier, or a “data backbone.” For example, you can use URLs as identifiers: they’re free, globally recognizable, high-quality data points that enable you to efficiently gather information on a business’s industry, online activities, and functionality. Clean data construction is the way forward, and ignoring the need is sacrificing your competitive edge. A strong backbone is key to riding the growing data wave to prosperity.