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The
events organiser found that international data posed certain
problems - until WinPure came on board.
THE PROBLEM
It's never
easy keeping international data straight - especially when
it comes from countries as far-flung as Botswana, Belarus
and Brunei. Different languages, cultural quirks and formats
make building a database of international contacts no easy
task.
Events
organiser UKiP Media and Events deals with international data
- and the problems that come with it - for exhibitions such
as its flagship show, the Aircraft Interiors Expo, which attracts
nearly 12,000 business attendees from around the globe to
Hamburg.
"Part
of the complication comes from the fact that we only put on
international shows," says UKiP's information officer,
Alistair Roylance.
For example,
one UKiP event attracts visitors from more than 130 countries.
This complicates the data-collection process: due to the idiosyncratic
nature of international postal addresses, the data comes in
many different formats. "It's a major headache,"
says Roylance. "Malaysian addresses, for example, are
phenomenally long. It was important to get the data into a
usable format."
The language
barrier also proved problematic. Many customers in non-English-speaking
countries, such as Japan, Korea and various African nations,
did not always understand instructions on forms, and would
complete them incorrectly, putting surnames instead of given
names, for example.
Elsewhere,
the fact that its circulation-derived data was predominantly
on paper format, while its exhibition-derived data was electronic,
led to inconsistencies. There was also overlap between these
two data sources, with 80 per cent of names appearing on both
lists.
Further
problems of duplication arose when some customers would register
with the company more than once. These issues increased the
chances of multiple communications being sent to a single
address, incurring extra costs. "This was a massive problem,"
says Roylance.
THE SOLUTION
UKiP sought
the services of WinPure and its Clean & Match 2007 software.
With demos and tutorials available online, UKiP was able to
manage the process itself. "The product is made for marketing,
administration and IT, so it's very easy to use," says
WinPure's marketing director, David Leivesley.
"It
offers the cleaning aspect as well as the de-duplication aspect,
which UKiP exploited." The Match module allows customers
to choose which fields they want to de-duplicate, and then
highlights any possible duplicates within the database.
"You
can install it and you know it's going to work," adds
Roylance. "It's quite intuitive, too. Only two days'
training were needed."
THE RESULTS
UKiP has
found that the product has taken much of the workload away
from its database staff. "It freed up a lot of their
time, allowing them to concentrate on more important matters,"
says UKiP's Roylance.
The nature
of the software proved helpful, too, as the people collecting
the data were the ones using the software. "It helped
raise awareness within the company of how important data integrity
is," says Roylance.
The de-duplication
led to more targeted mailings, which in turn led to reduced
mailing costs of around 10 per cent.
CLEANING
KIT: WINPURE CLEAN & MATCH
Q: WHAT
IS IT?
WinPure
Clean & Match is a list cleaning, data cleansing and data
de-duplication software solution rolled into one application.
It has been designed to be used by anyone, not just IT professionals.
Q: HOW
DOES IT WORK?
The customer
imports the list, database tables or spreadsheets into the
software, then uses it to clean, correct and de-duplicate
the file. Names and addresses, emails and various other types
of data can be cleaned.
Q: WHAT
ARE THE BENEFITS?
WinPure
Clean & Match aims to increase the accuracy of customer
data (business or consumer, local or international). Removing
duplications can help to reduce marketing postage costs and
stop alienating customers who receive more than one mailing.
A company's corporate image can also be improved by using
standardised styles for names and addresses with clean, correct,
fully populated and duplicate-free data.
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