Sometimes it feels like all we hear about is data. Gather as much data as you can and understand everything about your organisation. Use big data to create a unified view of your customers. Implement advanced machine learning to extract gold from your existing data and learn what the future holds.
It seems like the whole world is looking at data right now. And it seems like you need to start running to catch up.
Sometimes you do – and sometimes putting in place simple processes and standards around data governance will get you where you need to be operating.
Don’t waste time
What really drives value for most organisations is not data itself. The majority of businesses want to get back to their roots and do what they do best – whether that’s B2B sales, running a great non profit or providing amazing support to their customers.
Data should drive all these activities. But time and again we work with organisations where data is getting in the way of their mission, not accelerating it.
Sales teams in particular often end up frustrated with clunky data collection processes. If they can’t trust the data in front of them lead generation and business development becomes a slog.
And over time the cost – in team attrition, customers contacted multiple times by different teams and sales opportunities missed – piles up.
Common sense changes
When we started with PatSnap, a leading provider of intellectual property information, they were feeling the impact of a large volume of low quality customer data in their CRM systems. Poorly defined business development and sales processes meant collecting good quality customer data was difficult and time consuming for their teams. Leads, for example, did not exist – each new sales conversation required creating three separate records.
This meant more and time spent handling faulty data, less time speaking to customers, limited scope for automation initiatives and every decreasing time generating sales leads.
Working across the business, we helped PatSnap design and implement straightforward data governance processes, aimed at making it easy for sales teams to create and maintain usable, quality customer data. We worked to create an effective set of governance mechanisms to ensure the correct data quality standards were being followed. In lead management, for example, this meant a drastic reduction in unnecessary records.
For, data governance is not just about processes and technology. We created and worked with the business to put in place a clear data governance framework to encourage a data savvy workforce. After these changes, PatSnap was able to spend more time selling to their customers, focusing on value add automation plans and could be confident that data quality issues could be identified and solved as soon as they emerged.
Get data right – and set your teams free
Your teams want to excel. They bring passion and motivation to the table – which is why it can be so frustrating when they are let down by poor quality data they can’t trust.
Luckily, the principles of effective data governance can be quickly understood and put into practice across any organisation.
And when you’ve got the data basics sorted, it’s over to your teams to do what they do best.
