What are the implications of poor and incomplete data collection?

Feliks Malts

Length

2 min read

Date

4 October 2016

Data quality is becoming increasingly important and should be a top initiative at every company. Poor and incomplete data collection can lead to a loss of revenue, wasted media dollars, and inaccurate decision-making. A lack of quality data causes the inability to assess performance, sales, and the converting customer accurately. An excellent way to think about it is garbage in, and garbage out; poor data input leads to poor decision-making and has a direct impact on performance.

Bad data is like cracks in a foundation; building on it is beyond risky

As the consumer journey becomes increasingly more complex, there are more ways than ever for a consumer to be exposed to the brand. If you aren’t able to accurately track which channels or campaigns are driving conversions, you lose visibility into optimization insights, potential revenue sources, and the ability to properly assess why conversions are or are not occurring. For instance, missing data may lead to undervaluing certain channels that may actually be driving more conversions at a lower cost. However, without insight into the entire data set, you may shift the budget into underperforming or more expensive channels, which limits sales potential and increases media spend.

By not being able to accurately assess performance, you risk limiting brand growth. Without a full data set, it becomes impossible to measure the relationships between channels and better understand conversion trends to find growth opportunities. It also becomes impossible to know if the media investment was worthwhile.

To recap, some implications of poor and incomplete data collection are: