Most companies are already aware of the errors, costs, and missed opportunities connected with duplicate data. Records for customers, products, suppliers, and more are duplicated as a result of mergers and acquisitions or proliferation of operational systems. Often no concrete steps are taken to prevent the duplicate records from occurring, which is a big mistake.

The duplicate data issue may not be a priority on your list, especially when you look at it as an idle and timely investment. However, speaking from experience of working with data, we have to strongly disagree. Here’s why.

Costs and Lost Income

For example, imagine the added costs of sending five of the same catalogs to one individual. 

To help reduce unnecessary costs, users need to be able to find duplicates and prevent more duplicate records being entered into CRM.

Difficult segmentation

Furthermore, without an accurate view of every customer, it becomes difficult to segment properly. Sending out non-targeted emails can hurt open and click-through rates, which is wasting your time and money. Having high-quality, accurate customer information can help you offer more personalized messages, which make a huge difference when it comes to getting and keeping customers.

Negative Impact on Your Brand 

Errors that come from duplicate data can hurt the way that customers and prospects see your business – for example, sending the same prospect the same campaign two or three times. 

Duplicate data doesn’t just hurt prospects when they interact with your firm before their purchase. It can affect the messages they receive throughout their experience as a customer, and over time, small mistakes can add up.

Confused Customers

Poor personalization can also confuse your customers. When you send out messaging that includes inaccurate or outdated data, you’ll add more work for your customer support, who will have to answer questions from those confused individuals. 

Less Informed Decisions and Inaccurate Reports

If you are planning on using the data to make informed decisions about what you should be doing about future business growth, you have to make sure that your data is complete, accurate, and duplicate free. Decisions based on low-quality data are merely assumptions. 

Missed Sales Opportunities

Poor-quality data filled with duplicate records can also be expensive in terms of missed sales opportunities. Think of the time that could have been spent contacting the right prospect, rather than reaching out to contacts that are no longer in the same position.

Poor Business Processes

When employees get tired of the CRM because of the amount of inaccurate data and duplicates, they can turn to using traditional methods to keep customer data, like Excel or even Post-It notes. Using such business tools can limit the view of your customers and the growth of your business.

As your customer base and business grow, so will the number of customer records, which would make the data unmanageable and increase the likelihood of losing it.