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Address Change
a Moving Target
A golf partner (and good salesperson) relates
this story: "Last week I was heading from my office for a client
meeting. At the last minute I decided to review a piece of
information from their website. I was fortunate that I did
because I noticed as I entered the site that I had the incorrect
address information for the customer! It seems the customer had
moved since my last sales call but we had not updated their
address information. Had I left for my meeting with the existing
information in my Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) solution I
would have wound up halfway across the city - and very
embarrassed."
How do you avoid this scenario, and the many
other problems that poor data creates? It is estimated that
about 20 percent of the records in a given database reflect
changes in address data each year. Customer moves, mergers and
acquisitions can wreak havoc on customer data.
Implement a coherent policy on accurate data
collection, starting at the front line with sales, and ongoing
maintenance for existing customers and contacts. Ideally, you
would have one central database containing all name and address
records: customer, supplier, prospect or other - thus avoiding
the need for multiple databases to be updated when someone
moves.
When designing a policy for collecting and
maintaining up to date data, you should:
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Assign responsibility for initial
collection and ongoing maintenance and updates to specific
people
-
Consider practical steps to regularly
review and update your database; perhaps by periodic phone
calls to customers or on-line address searches.
-
Regularly review your customers' web sites
- as well as keeping informed about what they're doing, and
any consequent sales opportunities, you could simultaneously
double-check the address, etc.
-
Schedule periodic searches for duplicate
and incomplete records - if you have a rational database, this
is easily accomplished using basic analysis tools such as
Excel.
-
Increase revenues through knowledge that
could not otherwise be realized
-
Control costs of records maintenance and
reduce duplication
There's more to this than avoiding sales
errors. For example, consider the accounts receivable function. Attention to data quality in your billing
system profoundly affects the collection and reporting of
revenue. The more incorrect data in
your database, the longer it takes to collect revenue. The
consequences of mailing invoices to the wrong address (or
emailing to the wrong email address) are obvious!
Accurate data
collection helps avert this situation and protects the bottom
line from inaccurate billing that might mask the real financial
picture. Moreover, it prevents unnecessary referral of accounts
to collection agencies because of incorrect data.
My advice to my golf partner was to have his
company re-examine both the systems they have in place, and
their corporate policies and procedures, to ensure that (a)
their data collection is prompt, accurate and relevant, and (b)
that the appropriate information is available to the appropriate
people at the right time. That way he'll always be able to find
his customer's address. Now if only he could find his ball...
You Too Can Excel
Blue Link
users are able to obtain all kinds of information from their
system on a timely basis. One of the favourite tools used in
data analysis in Excel, linked to the Solutions (and / or other)
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Once again,
Blue Link is offering one day training courses to provide you
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.For
more information on courses running June and July in Concord,
Ontario, please contact Ron Cocking:
ron@bluelink.ca
.
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In this
issue:
Address Change a Moving Target
You Too Can Excel
Tips and Tricks
Our Products
Tips and Tricks
Excel Tip
Special Paste Options
You probably already know how to copy and paste,
which can be useful in Excel, but sometimes causes unexpected or
undesirable results.
To get more control
over how Excel pastes information, try using Edit, Paste Special. Three
of the more interesting special options offered are:
-
Values - pastes any formula in the source as an
actual value
-
Column Widths - use this to set destination column
widths to match those of the source
-
Transpose - copies columnar data into rows, or vice
versa - can be used in conjunction with any of the other special
options.
Experiment with these and the other options - but
remember to save your work first!
.
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