The National Retail Federation, Washington, and Acxiom Corp. announced a joint initiative last week in which NRF members can receive a free, confidential analysis of their customer data quality and learn how their data compare with retail industry benchmarks.
“Data quality is a critical issue for customer-driven retailers,” said Cathy Hotka, vice president, information technology, NRF. “Retailers can have tremendous investments in IT infrastructure and processes designed to help them grow profitable relationships with their customers. But if the underlying data is flawed, that data will never reach its potential.”
For the NRF Data Quality Analysis, retailers provide a sample file of their customer data and receive a report on how their data compare with an industry score in terms of quality, including address accuracy, name quality and the level of customer data integration. Information on possible data quality improvement can be provided.
The data quality analysis was introduced at the NRFtech IT Leadership Summit in San Diego, which started Aug. 10. The analysis uses the Acxiom Data Quality Indecx, a proprietary methodology that employs a weighted composite measure of more than 40 metrics to determine the data quality scores.
Acxiom, Little Rock, AR, said it treats the customer information with confidentiality and security. At no time will any individual company's information or data quality score be revealed to a competitor or outside party, and sample data are destroyed after the scoring process is complete.
