When it comes to the challenges of running a business, logistics and organization of internal processes take up a significant portion of your daily operations. Companies that work with vendors and are in charge of customer orders need these processes to be as efficient as possible. Any hold-up in the order delivery or problems with the order management will have a negative effect on your customer relationship and your business’ reputation.

One of the things that cause problems in order management is bad data. Even if you have an efficient order management process, it won’t do you much good if the data you’re working with is not up to date. It might not seem like a huge problem, but in this case, businesses are losing much more than they think they are. What are the costs of bad data in order management? Let’s have a look:

Misplaced Trust

When it comes to bad data, we often speak about terms such as “hidden costs.” These may not always be obvious, and you likely won’t be able to calculate them accurately, but they happen as a consequence of these issues.

When there’s a problem in the order management because of bad data, the outcome with the customer is almost always unfavorable and involves them losing trust. At best, their order will be late. At worst, it may never arrive. And there are still cases that fall somewhere in between, where the problem has resolved, but the issue in the first place left the customer feeling less than impressed.

Will the customers who haven’t been blown away with the customer experience do business with you again? The answer to this question depends on many factors, including your competition, the quality of your product, and how well you handled the problem after it occurred. However, it’s usually best not to risk it at all — and the way to avoid this is ensuring that your information is always up to date.

Increased Costs

Another potential issue caused by lousy data are the increased costs your business might incur. Whenever incorrect data creates an order to go to the wrong address, there will be Undeliverable As Addressed costs to pay. It happens more frequently than you think: in 2015 alone, handling 1.4 billion pieces of undeliverable mail cost the USPS $788 million.

Addresses that haven’t been updated or contain missing and incorrect address elements contribute to the problem. Businesses have to ensure their customer and vendor data is correct, up to date, and automatically handled. It eliminates the possibility of human error, which is the leading cause of incorrect addresses showing up on orders.

Keeping Data Accurate

Eliminating bad data should be a business’ priority if they wish to evade its costs — both hidden and apparent. For processing and managing orders, ERP systems are invaluable, but you can also augment them with software integrations solutions that take care of contact data accuracy. Runner EDQ solutions for managing vendor and customer contact data add another level of automation and quality to your day-to-day processes, ensuring that you have enterprise quality data to work with.