What is Data Cleansing?

Data cleansing is the process of amending or removing data in a database that is incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or duplicated.

Data cleansing is a valuable process that can help companies save time and increase their efficiency. Data cleansing software tools are used by various organizations to remove duplicate data and also fix and amend badly-formatted, incorrect or incomplete data from marketing lists (i.e. spreadsheets), databases and CRM’s. This process can achieve in a short period of time what could otherwise take days or weeks for an administrator or a purposed team working manually to fix. This means that companies can save not only time but money by utilizing data cleansing tools and processes...bottom line; time and data are money!

Why is Data Cleansing Needed?

Data cleansing is of particular value to organizations that have vast swathes of data. These organizations can include non-profits, banks or government organizations. Small to medium enterprises can find a good use for the process and self-serve program/apps. In fact, it is suggested by many sources that any firm that works with large data sets should invest in cleansing tools and adopt a proven data hygiene process (MDM). These tools and MDM processes should also be used on a regular repeatable basis as inaccurate data levels can grow quickly, compromising databases and decreasing business efficiency tools...bottom line; time and data are money!

Our Approach to Data Cleansing

The CADG Data Integration (DI) Team approaches the deduping of data by first understanding how pervasive the dirty data actually is. This is accomplished through in-depth analysis and iterative discussions with the client's assigned data contacts and domain experts. Once the DI Team understands the details, they will deliver a deduping strategy and accompanying report with a detailed project plan and timeline. This detailed roadmap will outline all steps of the deduping phase. Once the final deliverable and sign-off has occurred, CADG will present an option for the client to maintain their own data through a Self-Serve Interactive Data Management and Cleansing Tool - see our Data Deduplication tool page to learn more.