Sir Francis Bacon is generally credited with first uttering the famous phrase, “Knowledge is power.”
While there’s no denying that knowledge can potentially be very powerful, Bacon could never have predicted how much of it we’d have four centuries later.
Today, most companies are struggling to keep their big data from becoming an overwhelming burden. Far from powerful, it constantly threatens to be one of the most disempowering liabilities holding a business back from reaching its potential.
3 Ways Duplicate Data Is Hurting Your Team
Big data is a perfect example of an asset that can quickly become too much of a good thing. If you think that too much data couldn’t possibly harm your team’s performance – or at least not enough to merit your attention – you may not be aware of how much of this information is produced in duplicate.
This is a problem that should be tackled right away, as duplicate data will limit your team’s productivity in three very important ways.
1. Incomplete Customer Profiles
Accurate customer data is essential. Unfortunately, duplicate data can lead to multiple profiles, each with different information.
As a result, you have incomplete customer profiles, which make prospecting a needlessly difficult task. You may even alienate potential customers by sending them multiple copies of the same materials or starting them at the beginning of your email funnel when they’re already halfway through.
2. Wasted Marketing Budget
If your team is like most, you would love to have some extra room in your marketing budget.
Yet, many teams would already have that desired budget – and the improved productivity that would go along with it – if they weren’t wasting so much money on duplicate content.
Again, there are the costs to send marketing materials to the same people. However, there is also the reduced productivity that occurs when your team is basing decisions on analyses that provide skewed results because of duplicate data. Money is then spent based on this misleading information – money that could have been much better spent on more productive purposes if the duplicate data was removed.
3. Time Spent on Manual Operations
Duplicate data isn’t always a negative in and of itself. There are times when your team may need the same data set in two or more different systems.
The reason this ends up hurting productivity is because the data is shared manually. Employees are handling the duplication and sharing of data. Depending on how much data needs to go through this process, this might mean paying for overtime. At the very least, it will require a serious misallocation of your team members’ time. API integrations for duplicate data already exist for this very purpose, automating the process and freeing up your people to make better use of their time.
Keep Data from Becoming a Detriment
In the digital age, data is more powerful than ever. The better your company is able to leverage it, the better it will perform. This means finding how to best use your data but also taking steps to ensure that information doesn’t become a hindrance. Use the above list to regularly audit your company for the ways in which duplicate data may be holding you back and you’ll neutralize one of the biggest threats to your team’s productivity.