Why is the Quality of Your Data Important?

Data quality is the foundation of everything we do here at Shift Digital—we strive to be the single source of truth for our customers. Over the course of our history, we’ve continued to evolve and implement best practices to ensure that data we’re capturing, analyzing, and delivering is of uncompromising quality. In this series, we’re sharing those best practices, outlining exactly what it takes to deliver the quality data required to truly optimize your digital marketing programs. 

Quality, however, can be a big, vague word. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So, to kick off this series, we’re first exploring what quality really looks like when it comes to data—and why it’s so incredibly important.

Quality data is accurate.

What good is data if it’s not reflecting the truth? Ensuring accuracy in your data collection requires immense attention to detail—just one error can throw off an entire reporting cycle.  

At Shift Digital, we use advanced machine learning techniques to constantly monitor our operational data capture systems to ensure data is correct in its most raw form. All data processing and aggregation pipelines include highly granular alerting systems that identify processing issues or unexpected data points so they can be addressed before the data hits downstream reporting systems.

Quality data is immediately accessible.  

Having real-time data at your fingertips enables you to identify and fix potential issues quickly. Whether you’re looking to make updates to your website to deliver a more user-friendly experience, or assessing the efficacy of your digital marketing initiatives, having easily accessible data to inform your strategic planning and decision making is key. 

Shift Digital is constantly developing innovative ways to get data where it needs to go quickly and accurately. We continue to invest heavily in this area and, are at the cutting-edge of data operations and analytics technology for a variety of service and retail industries. Our latest Databricks’ Lakehouse architecture provides an easily accessible single source of truth across the entire organization.

Quality data is comprehensive. 

Finding the perfect balance of how much data to collect is no easy feat. Collect too much and you have information overload. Collect too little and you may be missing out on the bigger picture without even realizing it. When determining how deep your data needs to go, it’s always best to start broader. Understanding the outliers in your data is key to reaching accurate conclusions.

Shift Digital’s approach to the question of ‘how much data to capture’ has always been highly nuanced. Since much of the data we capture is from our certified programs, we must balance the desire to capture as much data as possible with the reality that it needs to be consistent and concise. With this approach, Shift can do much more with the data that we have instead of drowning in data that provides no real business insights as we see in other organizations throughout the industry. 

Quality data is usable. 

It seems like nowadays, there is no limit to the amount of data that can be collected. 

However, as noted above, having too much data—or more specifically, data structured in a haphazard way—can often do more harm than good. To effectively glean valuable insights from your data and support your team in making more intelligent, data-centric decisions, the data must be delivered in a format that’s easy to understand. 

Shift’s data processing delivery team provides a highly curated normalized set of data feeds to all downstream consumers. This enables data consumers to focus their efforts on finding valuable insights within the data. Maintaining consistency between offline and online reporting systems and across multiple products is key.

Quality data, delivered.

The data you collect has immense value for your business. It gives you visibility into buyer preferences and trends. It illuminates potential problems that need fixing. It helps to drive important business decisions. Data sets you up for success—but only if it’s accurate, immediately accessible, comprehensive, and usable. The quality of your data determines the quality of the service you deliver—it’s not something to take lightly.

To learn more about how you can maximize the quality of your data, and for support implementing your own customized plan, contact your dedicated Shift Digital representative today.