Businesses love data. So much that they love to acquire every bit of it, rarely realising that they don’t have the efficiency and infrastructure to keep it intact. Leave aside using big data with predictive analysis for smart decision making; they don’t know what to do with it. They don’t know how to perform CMS cleansing, how to stop data from getting dirty and not let it cost them money, business and reputation.

With the surge of IoT and connected devices, businesses have understood the impact of data. However, they still lack the perspective that when it comes to data, less is more. It is the quality that matters, and when businesses are obsessed with data like dogs chasing cars, they are bound to reach nowhere. The marketing team keeps sending emails to outdated email addresses. The sales department can’t connect to potential clients and instead, has to work its way to mend broken ends in the communication.  No wonder, the poor data quality costs the U.S. companies more than $15 million every year!

The data ecosystem is becoming increasingly intricate and layered and posing challenges for businesses irrespective of their size. Whether you are a startup, a corporate group, an MNC or a homegrown local brand, data quality is paramount. According to Mei Yang Selvage, Research Director at Gartner, poor data quality undermines your business, its processes and digital initiatives while gradually eroding customers’ trust and confidence in you.

Ted Friedman, Vice President, Gartner, acknowledges. According to him, “Poor data quality negatively impacts business performance and is a major contributor to distrust and business value.”

Why should businesses outsource data verification services?

Many organisations don’t have standard protocols for data quality, no definition of critical data roles or the lack of vision to meet objectives of data quality. Outsourcing data verification services can help businesses to imbibe the data-driven culture while ensuring the effectiveness of data and have greater information management for optimal impact,

Besides, the cost of data quality tools remains high. On average, the annual spend of data quality tools can go up to $208,000 that curbs a proactive adoption of technology. By outsourcing data verification service, you can drive business value, opt for an adaptive approach towards high-end tools and eliminate distrust among business, IT and customers.

Data and analytics will be the key player in an organisation’s digital transformation, and according to Douglas Laney, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, it will need a forward-looking decision.

However, as a business owner or a decision-maker, it is very important to understand the business challenges, issues and needs of your business. Only then you can align and connect the data quality improvement with business priorities.

A “go” or “no-go” decision for outsourcing data verification services is crucial and should be a well-thought-out decision because: More often than not, they don’t understand the connection between your business’ output and quality improvement. They aren’t what they say.

Before outsourcing data verification services, you should ensure that the company has proper infrastructure and workforce to handle and deal with large batches of data. You wouldn’t want to trust a new fledgling company with crucial data. Not that there is something wrong with that. But eventually, it takes expertise and experience to ensure that the data stays safe and secure.

Some of the important checkpoints are:

• Your data should be stored on the cloud, away from prying eyes, and nothing is modified without giving a proper reason.
• The data verification service provider should delete the data after thirty days or upon request.
• They should be open to entertain ideas and discuss your needs till the time you are satisfied with the results,

Track Record

Reading about the company that you are outsourcing data verification to isn’t such a bad idea. Google reviews often come in handy when it comes to an understanding of the integrity of a service provider. It is okay that they have one or two negative reviews, but if it is forming a pattern, that’s a red flag for you. So, stay clear. You would also like to know about their clientele and the projects they have been handling. Nothing much, but the case studies to understand the task at hand, their approach, methodology and solutions provided.

Are they offering a one-size-fits-all solution or there are bespoke data verification services that cater to the unique needs and challenges of your business?

What is their core competency?

Here a few pointers and questions that you can begin with and have a fair estimate of their integrity and approach towards the work and services they offer.

• Are they a one-stop destination of data solutionsor just a bundled affair that is bringing temporary relief to your business?
• What’s their approach to clean up and validate the data? Are they offering a step-by-step methodology of data miningservices including data mining, data scrubbing and verification? Do they also use data appending to enhance the data and improve the quality of B2B lead generation?
• Does the company offer an audit trail and include changes or review of the data for you to see?
• Does the company verify data manually, have an automated process in place or is it a mix, offering you the best of both worlds?
• Are they aware of and abide by the rules and regulations?
• Is their software efficient and capable to deal with your business’ requirement? Is it designed to comply with recent regulation? Does it include new features?
• Does the company’s spoc accessible? Do they offer you a peek inside their quality assurance and monitoring process?

As a decision-maker, you would also like to inquire about the systems they have deployed to ensure the security of your data. They shouldn’t mind if you ask for an audit report. It is your data, and it is critical to understand that it is in safe hands.

Also Read: Bizprospex Core Competencies

Budget

Ah, the most important aspect of them all. Often companies make the classic mistake of price perception of quality. It is not necessary that the company, which is offering a shinier bundle of data appending services at a pocket-friendly price, is going to do a good job or vice –versa.  It is recommended to outsource the data verification services that can run smoother business operations that match your caliber in reputation and experience. However, you also must be mindful of outsourcing costs of your business.

Turn-around time

Are they efficient to process your company’s data verification job on-time? You need to determine if a company can stick to handling a big project. Checking their turn-around time with other projects can be a good start. It is good to have a mechanism and tools in place to track the work and to analyze the progress.

Team

A company should be staffed with an expert team that can handle the work and offer emergency services when required. Your outsourcing partner should offer you 24/7 support and mechanism in place to help you out when needed. Some companies keep scope for urgent work and services, which can bring the much-needed agility and speed to your business processes.

Workflow management

The outsourcing partner should present opportunities, action-driven insights for B2B lead generation and data appending to enhance the data. There should be several quality points at the sub-task levels to assess and check the data for issues and resolve them quickly. The team should identify redundancies, inaccuracies and gaps within the data sets at different levels. The review, validation and cleansing of data should happen at various check posts both internally and externally to ensure it stays updated. Besides, the outsourcing partner should come up with the standard protocol and plan to ascertain the incoming data turns into a valuable commodity and not a burden.

A Final Word

Outsourcing data verification services help you save money and enable you to drive insights from accurate data that keep you a step ahead of your competitors. Outsourcing data verification services also push you on the right track of data-driven ecosystem while being fast and cost-effective services. Data verification and email appending services, email data validation, email verification are great enabler for a business and parameters mentioned above will help you zero in on the right outsourcing partner for data mining services.

Do you also plan to outsource data mining services? Did this article help you to figure out the challenges and needs when you look for a data verification service provider?