Organizations worldwide estimate losing 6 percent of annual revenue to poor management of customer data, according to a survey of global data quality published yesterday by QAS, a division of Experian Marketing Services.
U.S. businesses admit to losing 7.3 percent of revenue.
“For the first time, we can assign a number to ineffective, siloed data quality initiatives in American corporations,” said Mark Parise, president of Experian Marketing Services. “A 7.3 percent loss is a figure that forward-thinking business leaders can use to influence their companies to take action to solve this pervasive problem.”
The research was conducted in June 2005 to establish the levels of accurate customer data within organizations and the perception of the data’s importance.
Dynamic Markets was commissioned by QAS to speak with 550 respondents in large public and private organizations in 10 countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The sample covered banking, insurance, finance, retail, telecoms, utilities, leisure, tourism, travel and the public sector.
According to the survey, 75 percent of businesses globally think they lose money through missed business opportunities because they cannot profile customer and prospect data quickly and effectively due to data quality issues. The U.S. figure is above average, with 77 percent of companies admitting that shortcomings in data quality hurt their bottom lines.
In the public sector, 60 percent of organizations worldwide think that inaccurate data cost them money in terms of wasted resources and lost productivity. One in 10 of these organizations think that more than 5 percent of their annual budget is wasted in this way.
The main problem stems from duplicated data and incorrectly addressed mail, the survey found.
