By Christine Christian - CEO Dun & Bradstreet

Identifying, acquiring and retaining profitable customers are critical to business success. To meet this demand, high performing marketing functions have shifted their offering from list suppliers to the provision of true customer insight.

Smart executives understand the value of customer insight and the need for data and analysis to drive this outcome. In fact, a survey conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide, revealed that nine in ten top executives place strong analytical and business intelligence capabilities at the top of their list in preparing them for the challenging business environment.

Despite this awareness of the benefits of business intelligence, only a very small portion of businesses use their data in a sophisticated manner.

According to a Harvard Business Review survey, only 23% of businesses use customer data to quantify the relationship between their business drivers and financial outcomes. This 23 per cent however, had an average 2.9 per cent higher return on assets and a 5.1 per cent higher return on equity, demonstrating that good quality data is a corporate asset that has positive financial impacts.

So how can businesses ensure their data is high-quality?

Depth and breadth are of paramount importance. This means data should come from a variety of sources, it should be updated regularly and there should be a significant number of records available.

The other side of the equation, the cost of bad data quality, is also significant. It prevents businesses from developing a comprehensive understanding of their customers, limits the possibilities of identifying new business leads and inhibits the establishment of authentic customer relationships.

One of the key drivers of bad quality data is data decay. A study conducted by Dun & Bradstreet in the US revealed that on average, business data decays between 1-3 % per month, demonstrating that the timeliness of updates to your database is absolutely critical to establishing authentic customer relationships.

But having good quality data is just part of the process - to achieve positive outcomes a business must also have the tools required to leverage their data and turn it into a wealth of valuable information. Without this capability companies find themselves data rich, yet information poor.

Utilising analytical, predictive and profiling tools to segment data in a myriad of ways is the key to informed decision making. But, the truly sophisticated organisations don't stop here; they go even further to understand the behaviours of their profitable customers and to help the business to make informed decisions about the customers its chases. They examine the likelihood that their customers will still be here in 12 months and, whether their customers have the capacity and propensity to pay on time.

We operate in an environment where lists are no longer enough to drive growth; an environment where data, analytics and behavioural modelling are a must. The shift from the provision of lists to business intelligence has begun and it must continue. If your business is not utilising quality data and analytics you are wasting valuable resources and risk being left behind by your competitors.

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