Bad data can cost your company tremendous money – up to $10 per record. You can solve the problem by digitizing paper-based forms and workflows.
How much is bad data costing your company? Not much, you probably think. You figure there’s probably not much poor data, so it’s not a significant issue. Just do a bit of cleanup, and you’re done. There's not much to affect the bottom line.
A new study from the data quality company Melissa, “The Real Cost of Bad Data,” shows how wrong you are. It warns that “the real cost of bad data is eye-opening.”
To use one example, it starts by claiming that a complete 20% of information about customers gathered by helpdesk staff needs to be corrected. Melissa estimates that verifying the accuracy of data entered into a database costs one dollar per record. The money goes towards paying staff, using a validation solution, and the cost of running computers to do that analysis.
That might not sound like much. But that one dollar figure is misleading, Melissa notes. Suppose batch processing is used to handle data validation. In that case, the costs go way up due to the additional work of deduping, batch processing, and data so malformed that the initial proof needs to be included. When you add that in, it comes to $10 per record.
Just How Costly is Bad Data?
But even that needs to be more accurate with bad data costs, according to the company. Prices skyrocket if companies don’t have mechanisms to check for bad data. The company claims the cost is $100 per record “due to misplaced shipments, returned mail, and lost marketing opportunities.” if data isn’t checked. In other words, you’ll be losing revenue, spending tremendous amounts of money in the shipping process, and losing income.
What does all this mean? It will cost you $100 for each fragment of bad data.
The SD Times puts it this way: “In the world of data, inaccurate inputs can cost a company not only time to repair, but it can mean lost revenue due to the inability to reach customers and prospects.”
What's a Solution to Bad Data?
The most cost-effective solution to all this is to use digital forms to make sure that data is adequately captured in the first place. That $100 cost per record goes away. I’ve written about this in my blog post, “Why Go Paperless? Benefits Of Mobile Forms.”
In that post, I pointed to the Cost Analysis of Paper and Digital Forms by Repsly and other studies showing how much money you can save by going paperless. You can improve productivity, reduce the cost of insufficient data, reduce paperwork, and more. By building powerful mobile forms apps, digitizing paper-based workflows saves time and reduces costs.
Ron Cogburn, CEO of Exela Technologies, sums up the costs of paper forms and the benefits of digital records this way in a Forbes blog post:
“Paper-based forms, records, and other workflows move slowly, take up much space, and require much labor. On the other hand, these documents can be scanned, and the data within them can be extracted, indexed, organized, and securely stored with minimal human intervention.”
The Best Way to Reduce Paperwork and Bad Data
Mobile and digital forms can save companies tremendous money, help them operate more efficiently, and find new revenue streams. You'll need the right mobile forms software builder to build forms for any mobile device and finally go paperless.
Alpha TransForm is ideal for the task because it offers the development speed of mobile forms products with the power of low-code development platforms. Users can be confident they're building enterprise apps that will never run out of control.
Alpha TransForm helps business users, or developers craft online or offline mobile apps in minutes that utilize the latest mobile features (camera, GPS, etc.) for fast, accurate data capture (think inspection forms, patient intake forms, etc.). Alpha TransForm apps can be modified and updated in minutes to respond to business or field needs quickly.
You can learn more about Alpha TransForm and try it free with sample apps for 30 days.
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