JJ Tan on why organisations in the region should pivot their data strategies towards ensuring data is healthy.
With today’s competitive marketplace, even the smallest advantage in delivering contextual customer experiences are no longer ‘nice-to-have’, but imperative. Data is the catalyst of all progress, but to stay on top of it requires businesses to understand the fundamentals of data health.
The Race To Digitise
The last 2 years have seen businesses in Asia race to digitise operations. As a result, the role of data and data quality measurements have become even more integral to business growth. Fuelling this is the fact that the marked increase in online consumption has heightened customer expectations. Without the ability to listen and comprehend their needs, customers will leave for greener pastures; for businesses that can listen, anticipate and even surprise them on a daily basis.
According to the Asian Development Bank, the fervour to get digitised, saw many in the region grapple with an absence of processes and systems to support data quality – resulting in huge data discrepancies and inconsistencies whenever data is gathered from sources. Amid this, organisations in the region should pivot their data strategies towards ensuring data is healthy.
Mapping Customers Through Data
Data that is valid and functional must provide up-to-date, reliable and accurate information for marketing segmentation, web personalisation and comprehension of the customer cycle. A complete, real-time and singular view of each customer journey provides the opportunity for the business to develop contextual offerings for each customer, and communicate these promotions at the right place, at the right time. Concurrently, employees that can harness and depend on such data will be able to make progressive improvements to processes through smart guidance, and even holistically comply with industry regulations.
When the data of a business is healthy, the organisation has clarity of the whole operation. Decision makers can zoom in and respond quickly to pain points or spot emerging trends, with a host of benefits that range from improved customer targeting and lower cost of acquisition, to increased speed of sales.
Whether it is to upsell, cross sell or customer retention, data empowers businesses with the relevant information to drive innovation and take advantage of emerging trends.
Revamping Customer 360
In the last decade, Customer 360 was touted as the solution to energize the relationship between customers and brands. What was an expensive investment in data tools yielded little, as 77 percent of organisations reported that customer insights from the programme failed to drive growth and brand differentiation.
By rethinking their approach to data and focusing on data health, businesses can enjoy the undelivered promise of Customer 360. A 3-step approach that marries preventive measures to spot and resolve data challenges, systemic improvements in data reliability with risk mitigation, and a data-centric organisational culture – will help realise the true value of Customer 360.
A Vision for Healthier Data
Poor data health means every data user in your organisation is impaired – resulting in lower quality campaigns and doubtful reports. With data analysts spending about one-third of their time vetting and validating data that still results in poor data outcomes is not an acceptable nor sustainable practice in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
By investing in data management, businesses can automate and streamline the data ingestion and integration process. As a result, organisations can reduce the time and cost to a fraction compared to manual processes, empowering the business to respond faster and make a bigger splash in the marketplace.
To unlock all the benefits of healthy data, the enterprise needs to have a vision for healthier data – by making the data more measurable and manageable for better discoverability, understandability, and value. Organisations that are data conscious along every stage of the data lifecycle can expect better business outcomes and better Customer 360 executions. Equipping the business with the right technology, people and practices, the business can protect themselves from common data threats and chart the path towards greater business resilience.
By putting healthy data at the centre of your customer 360 initiatives, you will provide customers with experiences that exceed expectations, and your team with the visibility they need to make confident decisions and build better customer relationships.
