The last couple of months have been nothing like anything we’ve ever experienced before. As the UK government continues to make significant interventions in response to COVID-19, businesses continue to adjust to this new ‘normal’, supporting the needs of their people, customers and suppliers, while navigating the financial and operational challenges this pandemic brings.

However, an essential part of success is now more than ever underpinned by a business’ ability to manage and leverage its customer data effectively. All organisations suffer from inaccurate data to some degree, but these data quality issues suddenly now, in this extremely challenging environment, has the potential to hinder survival.

Experian research highlighted that only half of organisations consider their CRM data to be clean and can fully leverage it. In addition, 28% of customer and prospect data is considered inaccurate. This level of inaccuracy affects organisations in four ways:

1. Effective crisis communication

Clear communication with customers and prospects, wherever they are in the world, is a key part of effective crisis management and can be difficult to achieve. If customer contact data is incomplete or out of date, this can cause significant delays and takes unnecessary additional effort to share important, timely updates with customers. 

2. A deeper understanding of your customers

Effectively segmenting customer bases and understanding customer value has never been so crucial, no matter what industry you work in. You want to ensure you stay relevant to your customers and reach the right people with the right message at the right time. With an accurate, complete and holistic view of customers, organisations can gain a clearer picture of their target audience, deliver more relevant information and services, and introduce new approaches to ensure that help gets to those most in need.

3. Data-driven decisions

Your customers will remember how you responded to the pandemic long after we all return to normal daily life. When poor data is entangling and crippling entire organisations, timely decision-making is hindered, and the customer experience is negatively affected. More organisations than ever now seek quick wins to improve data quality, evolve perceptions and drive impact when it’s needed most.

4. High quality data drives digital transformation

Another side effect of COVID-19 is that many organisations are trying to accelerate their digital transformation. This momentous journey can be more problematic if controls are not put in place to ensure a high standard of data accuracy, appropriate formatting, and reliability in the first place.

Another piece of research from Experian revealed 87% of organisations believe data quality is fundamental or significant to their digital transformation success, yet only 45% have made data quality tools a focus for investment.

Time to break silos

The world of data continues beyond the immediate pandemic we are currently facing. And data quality matters, but what you do with the data is equally important. To accelerate out of this crisis, businesses need to act fast to break down data silos, drive innovation and put in place strategies and solutions that deliver. 

The organisations that succeed are those that can make sense of the data, spotting the opportunities and assessing ideas quickly. Getting this right will only maximise your chances of success.