Best Practices: Creating and Maintaining a Database

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Phil McMannis, Database Analyst & E-Commerce Project Manager and Liz MacKenzie, Marketing Program Specialist from Experian QAS are invited to talk about the best practices for creating and maintaining a clean database.

Transcript of Best Practices: Creating and Maintaining a Database

  • 1. Best Practices: Creating and Maintaining a Clean DatabaseThursday, July 15 th , 2010 Teleconference: 1-866-237-3252Passcode: 561552

2. Welcome! Introductions and Overview of Todays Session

  • Experian QAS reviews best practices for creating and maintaining a clean database
    • Todays speakers:
      • Phil McMannis
        • Database Analyst & E-Commerce Project Manager, Experian QAS
      • Liz MacKenzie
        • Marketing Program Specialist, Experian QAS
    • Steps to obtaining and retaining good contact data
    • Questions from the audience

3. Why is contact data management important?

  • Improve communications and increase responses
    • Ability to market, cross-sell
    • Timely delivery of products and services
    • Bill collection
  • Reduce unnecessary costs
    • Wasted printing and postage expenses
    • Efficiency of call center personnel, back-office staff
  • Enhance customer service

The right contact data + the right follow up =Improved customer & prospect relationships 4. Polling Question 1 5. Its not just about having a database its really about what you do with it! 6.

  • Step 1:Understand your data
  • Step 2:Clean existing data
  • Step 3:Remove duplicate records
  • Step 4:Enhance and update data
  • Step 5:Verify data during all capture processes
  • Step 6:Continue to enhance, update, and learn

Steps to Clean and Maintain a Clean Database 7. Step 1: Understand your data

  • Key questions every organization should ask:
    • Where does the data come from?
      • Who enters it (customers or staff)?
      • Do they want to get it right?
    • How is it formatted?
    • What, if any, controls are in place?
      • Required fields
      • Data entry training
      • Performance metrics

8. Step 1: Understand your data Build a Data Spider Multi- Channel Retailer Web/Online Call Center Mail/Fax Stores Fulfillment Marketing Customer Service Finance 9. Step 1: Understand your data Outline the Challenges of Data Capture

  • Web/Online
    • People arent paying attention
    • Typos
  • Call Center
    • Misinterpret what a customer is saying
    • Fat-fingering
  • Mail/Fax (Manual Entry)
    • Poor handwriting
    • Incomplete information
  • Stores
    • High pressure environment
    • Customers unwilling to provide contact details

10. Step 2: Clean existing data

  • Review Your Data
    • Dont be afraid to get your hands dirty, manually review records to see how it actually looks
  • Audit Completeness
    • Completeness dictates if fields need to be filled in via appending
  • Clean and Standardize
    • Leverage 3 rdparty data as well as your own
  • Dont Underestimate Addresses
    • Its one of the strongest pieces of data you have
  • This is the traditional scrubbing, batching or old school cleaning

11. Step 3: Remove duplicate records Can you merge first?

  • If possible, merge records into a centralized master file
    • Results in a singular view of the customer
    • You can better understand and segment your data
    • Economies of scale on de-dupe, append and enhance
  • BUT This isnt always an option as it depends on infrastructure

12. Step 3: Merge and/or de-dupe records

  • Decide what elements to match on
    • Matching elements determine where duplicates can be found
  • Use a tool with fuzzy or flex matching
    • This allows for a greater match rate
    • Helps to find duplicate records that may not have been identified with more rigid matching

Physical + Name or Email Address/Household Dougherty = Dorty PhoneticNational Broadcasting Company = NBC Acronym Wilson = Wislon Character Occurrence William = Bill = Will = Billy Table-based Mr. J. Smith = John Smith = Smith John Element Matching Shoe Size, SSN, Customer Number Custom Field Example Match Type 13. Polling Question 2 14. Does your data make you look like a spammer? 15. Step 4: Enhance and update data

  • 75% of organizations use at least one data enhancement set(Source: Dynamic Markets Limited, January 2009)
    • Perform NCOA Linkprocessing
      • USPS processes over 43 million permanent Change of Address (COA) orders each year
      • 15% of Americans and 19% of business move annually
    • Append geo-demographic data including:
      • Geographical information
      • Latitude/longitude coordinates
      • Cross sell ability
      • Risk
      • Lifestyle
  • Segment your file increase your ability to target customers

16. Polling Question 3 17. Step 5: Verify data during all capture processes

  • Know where your data is being collected and entered
    • Point of sale
    • Website
    • Call center
    • Paper forms
  • Set expectations
    • Have a standardized process in place so that all information is being captured in the same way
  • Verify against a reputable third party source

18. No Verification or Cleansing Interactive version atwww.qas.com/home 19. Post-Capture Cleansing Only Interactive version atwww.qas.com/home 20. Cleansing and Verification at One Capture Point Interactive version atwww.qas.com /home 21. Cleansing and Verification at Some Capture Points Interactive version atwww.qas.com /home 22. Cleansing and Verification at all Capture Points Interactive version atwww.qas.com /home 23. Step 6: Continue the cycle - enhance, update, andlearn

  • Data changes constantly and needs regular check-ups
  • Continuous database maintenance it allows for:
    • Better assessment of the quality of data after each strategy is implemented
    • Ensuring that old data is refreshed and continues to perform for future campaigns

24. QAS Products & services Real-time verification Clean & enhance

  • Clean
  • QAS Batch (PC Based)
  • QAS Bulk Processing(Web Based)
  • Phone & Email Batch (Service)
  • Enhance
  • QAS Unify(PC Based)
  • NCOA Link(Service)
  • Address
  • QAS Pro (PC Based)
  • QAS Pro On Demand(Software as a Service)
  • QAS Pro Web (Web Based)
  • QAS Pro API(Integration Toolkit)
  • Phone and Email
  • QAS Phone (Service)
  • QAS Email (Service)

25. Questions Questions after the event? Email: us.webinars@qas.com Call: 888-727-3985Visit:www.qas.com ? Submit your questions now! 26.