Explained: Customer Database Management Is the Key to Long-Term Success

Sales and marketing are two of the most important aspects of any business strategy. Without proper focus on these two disciplines, it is impossible to envision growth of any business. Customer data plays a significant role in driving a sales and marketing department towards its goals. Therefore, the importance of customer database management has risen greatly in the recent past.

The Rise of Data Value with the Advent of AI

The rise of AI-powered analytics has increased the value of data considerably. Nowadays, we find analytics embedded in common business tools e.g. CRM. Companies are utilizing the insights generated from such tools to conceptualize strategies for business growth. However, the quality of generated insights solely depends on the quality of data, especially customer data.

Best Practices for Improving Customer Database Management for Your Business

Customer database management can be improved by following these best practices:

1.      Collect pertinent data with a goal in mind – Data needs to be collected with a predetermined purpose. There needs to be certain goals in your mind before you take on this task. For example, if you don’t have/use a fax machine for communicating with customers, it is completely useless to collect their fax numbers. Or, if you are a law firm that deals in divorce-related cases, then the data received about criminal cases will be completely irrelevant. The goal for data collection needs to be set in advance and conveyed to all the data miners beforehand. This proactive approach will make the task of customer database management considerably easier.

2.      Centralized repository for data – The spread of data across different departments creates silos, which is a bad practice in the field of database management. When the data is decentralized, it is impossible to view customers’ journey in totality. Therefore, it is essential to have a centralized repository for data.

3.      Data governance – An unsorted database can be a nightmare for a company to manage. Therefore, data needs to be sorted by applying certain rules. For example, every customer should be identified with a unique customer ID (as customers can have same names). And, customers’ should also be categorized on their purchasing power, state, city etc. By sorting data in this way, you will be able to perform different operations on it with ease. Case in point being: Let’s say a customer wants to change the name on his account. To accomplish this, you have to find his customer ID and swap the old name with the new one.

4.      Security of data – Security of customers’ data against unethical hack attempts and natural disasters is crucial in database management. To ensure security, you should maintain different backups for your database. The best way to do this is by using cloud platform and storing data in different datacenters. For bolstering data security, it is best to use the latest data encryption. Also, you need to have pre-specified data access rules to prevent unauthorized data access.

Back Office Outsourcing Services for Best Database Management

Database management is quite a vast field and there are many dynamics that need to be considered while performing it. Although you can run an in-house department successfully by following the best practices and keeping yourself up to date with the current trends, it would be an extremely straining task that will impact your performance of core business activities. Back office outsourcing services provide an easy route to achieve success in customer database management.

Outsource backoffice work to a capable database management services provider like Vcare to ensure the best results. We provide completely dependable services and use the best encryption to safeguard your data against hackers’ threats.