Why Outsourcing Data Cleansing Beats Doing It In-House

Dirty data is something that every organization must deal with. Between formatting inconsistencies to changes in customers’ information, chances are you have a dirty data issue lurking in your CRM or other database. But, you may lack the resources or expertise to properly clean your data and restore its integrity. 

Unfortunately for most businesses, they won’t catch these issues on their own – 57% of businesses find out about their dirty data issues when they are reported by a customer or a prospect. Risking potential customer loyalty or new customer acquisition, dirty data is something you must address before it overruns your organization. 

If your team is already short-staffed and can’t keep up with their regular workload, adding data cleansing tasks to their desk will only spread your team more thin. But, in order to get data cleansing done correctly, you need to devote the proper resources and time to this important task. Data cleansing cannot be an afterthought for your organization or a task your team only completes as they find spare time here and there. 

For this reason and the numerous others we will discuss below, outsourcing data cleansing offers several benefits to doing so in-house. We will now cover some of the biggest advantages you will see if you decide to outsource your data cleansing efforts. 

Partner with More Experienced Teams

If you decide to establish an in-house team for your data cleansing needs, you will need to completely build out a new team of specialists who are skilled in this area. Data cleansing can be an intricate and time-consuming process, so you only want to hire the right people who understand data cleansing best practices and are skilled in data quality management. But, knowing what skills to look for in these potential hires can be a challenge in itself. 

When you outsource this work to dedicated data cleansing professionals, you can feel confident that your database and data quality are in good hands. You won’t need to concern yourself with the intricacies of the process and can trust that the experienced outsourced team is working diligently using their proven techniques. They will be able to get right to work and efficiently filter out incorrect data and restore your data quality. 

Rather than delegating this task to staff who may have a little extra time on their hands but limited experience with data cleansing, outsourcing ensures that these tasks are only being handled by skilled professionals to give you data quality you can depend on. 

Access to Specialized Technology 

If you try developing your own data cleansing team or workforce in-house, you will quickly realize that you need to license or set up advanced data cleaning tools and software to get the job done effectively. These specialized programs are often expensive and can result in a sizable upfront cost for your business to acquire and maintain in-house. But, if you’re trying to scrub large or complex datasets, it would be extremely difficult to do so without the proper tools and technologies available. 

Instead, outsourcing data cleansing to specialized companies means they already have access to the cutting-edge tools that are necessary to identify and resolve data quality issues efficiently. Such programs may include ones that can easily identify and remove duplicate entries, which likely isn’t a tool that is widely available or easy to be trained on. 

Deploy Resources More Efficiently

The time and money your team will save by outsourcing data cleansing to an offshore team is one of the biggest reasons why this is such a viable option. Aside from the specialized expertise and cutting-edge technology that you can take advantage of, there is no replacement for the resources that your business will be able to recoup through this outsourced partnership. 

For starters, outsourcing data cleansing is often a more cost-effective option than hiring someone internally to handle these tasks. Not only will you save on labor costs for the wages paid to these specialists, but you will also be able to save on other related costs like benefits and training. Most of the time, the fee paid to outsourced data cleansing teams will be less than what you would spend to support an in-house team. 

Plus, data cleansing can be a time-consuming process, even for professionals. But, outsourcing these tasks allows your in-house team to focus on their core responsibilities and strategic initiatives while your outsourced partner handles the data cleaning behind the scenes. 

Ongoing Quality Assurance

Business leaders may not be aware that data cleansing is not a one-time task, but requires ongoing effort to ensure that data quality remains superior even as the business collects new customer data. In today’s data-driven world, organizations are constantly collecting and storing new data every day, which opens them up to dirty data issues like duplicates, inaccuracies, bad formatting, and more. 

By working with an outsourced team, you can get consistent attention to your data quality and ensure that your database continues to be accurate and reliable month after month. Again, this keeps your team from being bogged down by these tasks on an ongoing basis, and you can ensure that your data quality is in good hands with a dedicated team handling quality assurance. 

Become More Agile

Outsourcing data cleansing allows you to scale up or down your efforts as needed, something that is much more difficult to do with a dedicated in-house team. This further supports the cost-effectiveness of outsourcing, as you can convert a fixed labor cost of supporting in-house staff to one that’s variable and proportional to the workload. 

As we mentioned above, data cleansing is likely something you will need to do on an ongoing basis. However, there will be periods that are more resource-intensive, like initial data cleansing, compared to ongoing maintenance and quality assurance. So, outsourcing data cleansing means you can be more flexible to adjust your labor costs as needed rather than adding to your overhead by expanding your internal team.