Manage your data quality with HubSpot’s Data Quality Command Centre

HubSpot have introduced a Data Quality Command Centre to maximise data health. 

Yet again the above opening salvo is a genuflection to the SEO overlords, so we can now talk to you with genuine warmth, not through AI-produced, search-engine-first, dry-as-bone, humourless nonsense. (need us to explain? See this to understand 😉 )

So, let’s talk data health … extremely important for all organisations, especially those that are data-driven and rely on accurate and quality data to, as Mei Yang Selvage, research director at Gartner suggests, “empower business insights ….and generate revenue by trading data as a valuable asset” 

As machine learning takes hold of decision making, poor data quality is becoming the number one enemy of its profitable use. And studies suggest the cost of bad data can be between 15% and 25% of revenue, a staggering amount, contributed to by error correction, confirmation seeking and mistake handling. 

These folk have looked at this subject in some detail and grouped data quality issues into 7 categories, of which we feel 5 are relevant to you : 

Duplicate data – as data gets generated from a plethora of sources, duplicates and overlap is inevitable. The same customer using a mix of email addresses can dilute their true potential, whilst some customers may drop into a segment that is unsuitable to their actual needs. 

Inaccurate data – highly regulated industries can suffer badly at the hands of inaccurate data, whilst personalisation is ineffective and marketing campaigns can underperform. Human error, data drift and data decay all contribute to inaccuracies, whilst Gartner claim that 3% of data gets decayed every month.

Ambiguous data – large databases are often plagued by ambiguous data … misleading headings, formatting issues and spelling errors all create reporting flaws that can compromise decision-making. 

Siloed data – siloed or hidden data can dilute customer profiling, leading to inaccuracies and lost opportunities. 

Inconsistent data – multiple data sources increase the likelihood of mismatches after consolidation. This can lead to the data value being compromised. 

That is a lot of potential data problems, all of which pose a serious threat to your systems if you lack preventative measures. 

So, the clever people at HubSpot have created the Data Quality Command Centre, a fantastic new antidote to data inaccuracies and duplications, helping data owners keep their data clean, accurate and relevant – and removing the pain of solving data problems reactively only after they have become noticeable problems for your teams. 

The Command Centre hosts three key displays

• Properties 
• Records 
• Data sync 

Properties – these are the data fields in which you store information, so, for example, the email address field is a property. Before Command Centre someone may have the less than glamorous task of scrutinising properties to see which were causing problems, but Command Centre will now do the heavy lifting and complete the following systems checks for contact and company properties: 

• Duplicates – properties that are similar or identical to other properties and therefore potentially dilute to true worth of customers/prospects as data is spread across multiple properties 
• Unused – properties that exist but aren’t used in any HubSpot tools, resulting in an unnecessary bloating of the system 
• No data – empty or incomplete values for the property 

Records – here you can see the total number of contact and company records, along with any associated issues:

• Formatting issues – incorrectly formatted records, such upper case rather than sentence case 
• Duplicates – creating the frustration of seeing numerous records for a Mr John Smith, all carrying a little bit of a bigger picture!

• Apps with sync failures - live apps that are not syncing correctly 
• Apps with no active syncs – apps that are either disconnected, paused, deactivated or not actually set up. 

And the best thing about the Command Centre is that all of these issues can be fixed right there in the centre! 

But, wait a moment …it’s not just HubSpot that are all over data management, there are tons of outfits that have turned data nerdiness into solutions valued by businesses the world over.  

Take Insycle for example, a fabulous tool that helps you clean and scrub your data to within an inch of it’s life!  

For example you can deduplicate by same name, same domain (ignoring the extension) or by same name, similar company, or by similar email address and first name ….  And anyone with a CRM of any size knows that the duplicate monster very quickly creates little duplicate children until you have whole families of duplicates running amok in your system, so it’s best to dedupe the dupes as fast and efficiently as possible. 

At Pacific Marketing we work closely with partners and platforms to help client data challenges, so if you need some support in data management then give us a shout.