In today’s business world, data has taken a central role. Companies and businesses collect it en masse, process it and use it for all the aspects of the business. From making business decisions to getting the attention of prospects, the use of data in business is becoming more prevalent.

As such, it’s no wonder why there’s so much emphasis on maintaining clean data. It is primarily for data that undergoes constant changes, such as contact data. In this article, we’ll take a look at contact data and the importance of managing it correctly, as well as software solutions that can help.

What Is Contact Data?

Contact data is the contact information a business or a company holds of its most important categories of contacts. Those are usually their employees, customers, and vendors. Contact data can include various information such as name, address, phone number, email, geocode, social media handle and more. However, this information is prone to constant changes — in 2017 alone, 11% of Americans moved to new homes. Will many more of your contacts change their phone numbers or start using new emails? The scale of data inaccuracy can be massive across the board, especially when input errors are taken into account. But why do you even need this information to be correct?

The Importance of Clean Contact Data

Not only does a business need to collect contact data, but it also has to manage it. If any changes occur, it’s imperative to update contact data so you won’t run into problems when you want to use the information. For example, if an employee or a customer changes their address, anything you send them by direct mail won’t reach them. It results in the returned mail, which in turn affects the costs. In the fiscal year 2013, the U.S. Postal Service identified 6.8 billion mailpieces as ‘Undeliverable As Addressed’ mail, which cost them $1.5 billion to process. It’s crucial for a business to maintain clean contact data to avoid added expenses or even legal repercussions.

The Golden Record — How to Get It and Keep It

The golden record is 100% accurate data point with all the necessary information about a contact. At RunnerEDQ, we want to provide the contact data golden record to each business executive through our interactive software solutions. Our collection of enterprise data quality solutions can help you manage the ever-changing profiles of the employee, customer, vendor, student and alumni contact data.

Our CLEAN_Data cycle involves exporting, standardizing and formatting contact data, de-duplicating it, verifying it and then enhancing it with all the missing information. If you have a fraction of contact information, such as the address or phone number, the enhancement part of our process will find you the email addresses, social media handles, geocodes, and fill in any contact information blanks, thus creating the golden record. From there, you can import the information and get it into your CRM or ERP.

Managing your company’s contact data is extremely important for keeping your employees and customers engaged and your costs low. You can make the process more comfortable with our software integration solutions tailored specifically to your organization’s needs.