Poor data management leads to poor customer service
Customer demand will result in businesses being forced to use data more effectively, leading to better data management practices across all industries, says industry body Data Management Association of Southern Africa (DAMA SA) and DAMA International president Sue Geuens.
“It is common for South African companies to duplicate many basic administrative functions, affecting their client services negatively, but data management best practices enable companies to improve their services levels and effectiveness easily.”
However, South African customers, whether corporate or consumers, are typically complacent about poor service, even though they are the ones who submit the same documents to different departments of the same company.
“Companies we do business with have our data. They are not using this data effectively, partly because it is easier for them to continue as they have for years and there are scant demands for them to change,” Geuens adds. This is the case despite customers being continuously aggrieved,
The lack of effective data management also hampers companies’ abilities to serve their customers effectively.
“South African businesses have not grasped that data are used for all their processes. It is the new currency. If you have sufficient information about a client, you can use this to improve in-house business processes and provide better and more personal services than competitors, including improving convenience for customers,” she adds.
Geuens says South African corporate customers and consumers are not aware that companies can provide differentiated and personalised services and that they should demand better services. “The best practices are well established, but South African companies have not embraced them, pointing to lethargy or disinterest.”
However, this also means that companies that implement good data management can gain significant market share, make their in-house operations more efficient and lower costs, notes Geuens.
The first step towards effective data management is to ensure its quality at the point of capture.
“Significantly, many of the data management faults, which cause customer unhappiness or operational problems, occur during data capturing. Data capturers are often viewed as an unimportant part of a business’s processes, [but] bad-quality data leads to bad-quality business decisions.”
Supporting data capturers and explaining the significance of the processes that use the data that they capture will help to improve such capturing and data management, she notes, adding that capturers or creators of data can then work to higher standards of quality and accuracy if they know which processes require the data and are aware of the significance of the data for other business processes.
Any data management initiative must have support from and be driven by the relevant executives, but also requires a passionate person to oversee its implementation.
People who understand the value of data and data management are the most important elements for the improvement of data management in companies and they must, of necessity, work with the capturers or creators and have access to all organisational departments to ensure that data management remains cognisant of the various uses of data throughout the organisation, Geuens explains.
Data management initiatives are long-term strategic processes, but constantly deliver commercial and strategic value, owing to the improved gathering and dissemination of data.
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