Data Cleansing – How Important is Data Cleaning?

Out of six pieces of mail I received one recent morning, one of them had the wrong name and the correct address and another had completely the wrong name and address on. Thankfully, instances like these are becoming fewer and fewer and I would suggest that this largely down to companies employing much more efficient data cleaning systems.

However, examples like the one above really do highlight the important need and necessity of such data cleansing set ups. It seems an all too regular occurrence that we hear on the TV evening news of some high profile blunder in some official government department that has resulted in people's personal data being misplaced or worse still, lost altogether! Of course we get insincere sincere apologies but the bottom line is these things shouldn't be occurring. Either some sort of human error (which of course is unavoidable sometimes) or worse still an antiquated or poorly maintained database can cause distress to millions when these shocking news stories break.

It is clear from situations like this, that the maintaining of accurate personal data has never been quite so important. We are often loathed to hand over such data in the first place, so having reliable data cleansing systems that allow the public to at least develop some sort of trust that their data and information is going to be managed privately and responsibly is an absolutely crucial step in today's age of information.

Of course these data systems need to be robust, reliable and able to cope with huge amounts of complex information such as names, addresses, dates of birth, and postcodes. The internet and its millions upon millions of users has opened up a whole new set of contact data such as email addresses and along with standard landline phone numbers, more and more people are using the mobile or cell phone numbers as their primary contact numbers, especially in business.

Effective data cleansing can ensure that all these various forms of vital data are kept up to date and accurate which from a business point of view is far more likely to lead to trusting and satisfied customers who are very astute and much more likely to give repeat business to a company that has taken good care of all their data and personal information.

So, I think the answer to the question in this article's title is very clear, data cleansingis very important!