3 Benefits of Hiring a Data Cleaning Company
3 Benefits of Hiring a Data Cleaning Company
In today’s hyper-connected world, the Internet of Things (IoT) puts a wealth of data at all our fingertips. Hiring a data cleaning company can help you manage it.
In 2021, there were 11.28 billion connected devices in use worldwide, according to Statista and Transforma Insights. By 2030, this number is projected to increase to 29.42 billion.
This network enables consumer data to be readily available via multiple channels. As such, businesses of all sizes should leverage data analysis to optimize their business decisions.
Business leaders agree that data management is critical to informed decision-making and long-term success. In fact, 83% of global organizations recently surveyed by Experian see data as an integral part of forming a business strategy. However, 69% of respondents felt that bad data hurt their efforts.
“Bad” can be a broad term, but in the world of data management it often refers to dirty data or incomplete data.
To fix these issues and allow effective data management to permeate your business processes, you and your team may consider bringing in a professional cleaning service to improve the quality of data sets in your databases.
This article will overview data cleaning and why outsourcing your data cleansing processes is the best way to derive high-quality data that can supercharge your company’s operations.
What is Data Cleaning?
Data cleaning, also called data cleansing, refers to the process of organizing data entries as a means of increasing the validity of a given data set.
When cleaning data, you may remove duplicate data, validate that data is relevant, correct the formatting on data points such as phone numbers, or take any other actions that make the data available to your team more useful.
Another data science process important to consider in conjunction with data cleaning is data wrangling. This process involves formatting data in a manner that makes it more usable or presentable. Data wrangling may be as simple as adding headings to columns in your data sets, or it may involve file format conversion and other more advanced processes.
Data Cleansing Tools
When undertaking a data cleansing project, data analysts will be sure to utilize all tech available to them to limit tedium and time-wasting. These can include Excel formulas, R packages, or Python libraries.
For more complex endeavors, though, there are a number of tools that data analysts will use. Here are several examples of popular data-cleaning tools:
Source: OpenRefine
Putting in the effort to maintain accurate databases can pay serious dividends for all your company’s business processes.
Whether running marketing campaigns, tracking internal performance metrics, or mapping supplier and performance costs, having high-quality data available allows your team to quickly and accurately analyze trends and make informed recommendations and business decisions.
Why Outsource Data Cleansing?
After having discussed data cleaning, you’re probably ready to harness the benefits of the process for yourself.
Like any smart professional, you’ll want to limit the impact data cleansing has on your bottom line and may be ready to take on the process in-house. However, outsourcing data governance to a data cleaning service can offer several competitive advantages to your business.
Here are 3 benefits of outsourcing your data cleansing efforts to professional data scientists:
- Expert-level understanding of data-cleaning tools
- Enhanced scalability of data cleansing operations
- Save time that your in-house staff can use elsewhere
Read on for a description of each point to see how the benefits of data cleansing services can be applied to your situation.
1. Expert-Level Understanding of Data Cleaning Tools
While we’ve reviewed data cleaning at a high level, reading this article will hardly make you a data science expert.
As with any tech-driven field, properly wrangling, scrubbing, and validating data requires niche knowledge and specific skills to be truly effective. By bringing in a properly-trained data cleansing team, you can be sure that all operations and resources will be utilized to the fullest of their potential.
Of course, you could simply hire a data-cleaning expert to be part of your internal team. However, such a decision will have you paying for a professional's benefits and onboarding costs not contributing to a function that directly adds value to your company.
One of the biggest skill-based competitive advantages a professional cleaning service can deliver is the efficient use of available technology. After an initial consultation, a data-cleansing firm will certainly be able to determine which data-cleaning tools will be the best fit for you and your team’s needs.
Even if they don’t bring in any new data-cleaning tools, professional data analysts can leverage your existing database tools better than an inexperienced user.
Take Microsoft Excel, for instance. The software was being used by over 879,000 businesses as of June 2022.
In addition to its availability, Excel boasts a wealth of advanced formulas and functions that can be huge differentiators for businesses of all sizes. Yet, many professionals don’t know how to use these functions properly. In fact, one of the most popular courses on LinkedIn Learning is “Excel: Advanced Formulas and Functions,” with over 1.9 million views as of January 2023.
By hiring a data-cleaning company, your business can truly harness the power of existing and new data management systems to maximize operational efficiency.
2. Enhanced Scalability of Data Cleansing Operations
As your small-to-medium-sized business begins to grow, one of the major business challenges that you’ll need to plan for is scaling operations.
As companies approach this challenge, outsourcing operations can be a great option to consider.
In fact, a 2021 Clutch survey found that approximately one-fifth of businesses with employee counts between 251 and 500 primarily use outsourcing to help scale their business operations.
Data cleaning is a prime area for external service providers to help with scalability. As your business grows, so too will your customer base, supplier portfolio, and marketing research teams. With this growth, the data available in your databases will grow as well.
If you keep data cleansing internally, you’ll have to make internal hires at a rate that matches your business’ growth rate. However, if you outsource data cleansing you can simply amend your contract to bring in additional support as your company grows.
3. Save Time that Your In-House Staff Can Use Elsewhere
With how close much of your data cleaning efforts will be to the efforts of your marketing and sales teams, you may be tempted to simply add “data governance” to the responsibilities list of your existing marketing and sales teams.
Such a decision would be short-sighted, though. According to a recent Deloitte report, 65% of organizations that outsource business functions do so to enable their internal team to focus on their core functions.
Having your existing teams take on data management may cut costs in the short term. Still, there will be a steep learning curve as the team members get up to speed on data-cleaning tools and best practices.
This learning curve will be certain to take your teams’ focus away from their previous responsibilities, which could lead to operational lapses in other areas. Additional training costs may also be required to help non-data scientists become data cleansing experts.
Hiring a Data Cleaning Company Can Optimize Efficiency Across Business Competencies
As we’ve demonstrated in this article, not only is data cleaning a huge potential difference-maker for your business but hiring a data cleaning company can help you and your team completely take advantage of the benefits of data cleansing.
An expert-level understanding of data management will ensure that you’re using data-cleaning tools to their fullest potential, that your company can scale without being hindered by data-cleansing deficiencies, and that new auxiliary responsibilities don’t hamper your in-house team’s time.
With more and more data becoming available to businesses like yours with each passing day, hiring a data cleaning company is one of the smartest business decisions you can make in both the short and long term.
Looking for a top data cleaning company? Search The Manifest’s list of top BPO companies for a great data management partner.
Additional Reading:
