I’m pleased to announce that we have just completed a major back-end upgrade to Match2Lists which means that new projects will now be processed considerably faster, in many cases more than twice as quickly as before.
I apologies for the small incovenience in that only recently added lists can be used in new projects, lists that can no longer be used in new projects will be flagged as ‘Expired’ however you can still download these lists and existing projects using these lists remain unaffected. This means that you may need to reload some of your older lists if you wish to use these in any new projects.
We have some more exciting updates for you due shortly, so check back soon for more information.
There is no business that functions in the absence of data. The scale of information in and information out of a business is greater than the scale of its goods in and out or the scale of its services rendered. What’s more, success in sales and marketing is particularly dependent on high quality data. So, every business needs to manage and leverage this data efficiently.
One very common practice to make the most of business data is data matching. In master data management, customer data integration and other vital data applications, matching is used to link related records in order to gain a unified view of customers, transactions, and so on. We can safely assume that your company will want to match data of some sort at some point.
But how do you select a data matching tool for your business? And how much does it matter which tool you choose?
Search for Data Matching Software
Let’s say you head to a popular search engine to look for a fast, easy data matching tool that won’t blow your budget. I’m going to do this right now. We’re looking for data matching software, so I’ll type that into the search box.
At this point we encounter the first hurdle in the data matching tool selection process: there are more than 4 million search engine results. This may make choosing one data matching tool a time-consuming task. You could just go with the Number 1 search engine result –while I’m looking, that’s Match2Lists.com, so your choice would not be a bad one!— but there are better ways to choose one tool from the masses.
Consider Data Matching Functions and Features
What features do you need in a data matching tool? For example, would you like your data matching software to have knowledge of common abbreviations, and the business logic to apply to them? This helps to reduce the number of false negatives in your data matching results, and if done well can also reduce the number of false positives.
“St.” may stand for “Street” or for “Saint”, perhaps depending on whether it appears before a name (Saint Something) or after a name (Something Street). “BT” typically refers to the BT Group (previously British Telecom) in the UK and in many of the 170 countries in which the company operates. Match2Lists is designed to return optimal results by applying business rules to abbreviations and acronyms according to your description of your datasets.
Consider Data Matching Frequency and Volume
Another thing to think about is how much data the business needs to match, and how often. Do you match data every day or only occasionally? Installed software will cost you the ticket price even if you only use it once per year; Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) data matching is more likely to offer a range of pricing plans to suit a variety of use cases. For example, the Match2Lists Pay-As-You-Go account lets you match data when you want and pay only for the validated results that you choose to download.
Who Will Be Matching What, Where?
Do you need multiple user access to your data matching projects? Do you want the ability to collaborate online on match validation, or to share uploaded datasets with your team? Will you all work from the office and during local business hours only, or will you take advantage of online access to a cloud computing solution that lets you match data on demand and on the move? A Match2Lists Enterprise Account gives you the greatest flexibility with options tailored to your business needs.
Test Drive the Best Solutions
While you’re here, take a free trial of Match2Lists and see how well it works for you. And if you have any questions, talk to us! We’re always happy to help.
Happy matching!
The Electoral Commission recently presented estimates of the accuracy and completeness of the data in the electoral roll for Great Britain in 2011. This is the first time in a long while that the national data has been scrutinised, rather than a sample subset of the data. The last national estimate of the data’s completeness (in England and Wales) was in 2000. The last national estimate of its accuracy was in 1981. So, one might say, they were due for a data quality check-up.
The report is a splendid example of how data quality considerations and constraints can vary. It really does all depend on your data and what you want from it.
Context in Data Quality
In the executive summary, the report’s authors mention that
The findings of this report, based on the registers in place around election time, cannot be compared directly with most previous estimates, which were based on the registers published immediately following an annual canvass. This is because the accuracy and completeness of the registers decline between annual canvass periods.
This makes sense: each register, once published, will lose completeness and accuracy with the passing of time. People move house, change their names; any set of contact data will suffer this loss of data quality unless it is continually updated with new information. Drawing the latest estimates from data captured out-of-step with the usual schedule of annual canvassing makes data matching against the previous estimates less valid, and makes it harder to draw conclusions about the comparative quality of the data.
Quality Beyond Compare?
For example, in this report accuracy levels were far lower at addresses where the current resident had moved in since the most recent annual canvass. Does that mean that the data from the annual canvass were better than those from the registers around election time? The accuracy of the canvass data has also reduced with each passing day since its publication. The two accuracy estimates, made in different contexts of time since the last update to the dataset, cannot be compared.
This begs the question: what do you do with a vast dataset that is not quite comparable to its previous iteration? Much of the time, we gain business intelligence by matching or sometimes merging data from different sources and different dates to analyse patterns and predict trends. If the data cannot or should not be matched across time, then the opportunity for extrapolation into the future seems limited. And one thing we love to do with our business data is to preview the potential future landscape.
Data Quality in Context
However, as Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission, explains, “Great Britain is about to make a significant change to the way electoral registers are compiled and managed, by moving to a system of individual electoral registration (IER).” So, the latest accuracy and completeness metadata are far more relevant to this task than an accuracy estimate from 30 years ago, or even a decade-old completeness estimate. The objective is to identify and address the weaknesses in the current registration system, so that the new system can be designed cleaner, smarter, and better at capturing and delivering the right data at the right time.
So when it comes to data matching, context, not content, is king. Now, where do you cast your vote for improved insight and decision-making when it comes to your choice of data quality tools?
A few bugs squashed in this release.
- Bug List loading failing on certain characters
- Bug Rounding issue when applying Auto Approvals in Match Visualiser
When loading a list with certain Unicode characters the backend process was failing, unable to handle these characters. This has now been updated and the issue resolved.
In the Match Visualiser the scores displayed and the backend scores did not match due to a rounding issue in the frontend. This meant that entering some Auto Approval values resulted in unexpected behaviour. This has now been corrected.
Until the next time, happy matching.
IT security can be expensive. For years, large enterprises have used IT service providers for security and data storage as well as for technical support. Smaller businesses often ran their security in-house, wary of the high cost of outsourcing data operations and security to an outside IT management company.
The Rise of the Cloud
The advent of cloud computing for data quality and other data operations has allowed small and medium-sized companies —the majority of businesses worldwide— to take advantage of massive distributed processing power to achieve rapid results, greater scalability and impressive cost savings. The service standards once available only from expensive IT consultancy and management firms are now available on demand to smaller businesses around the world through the cloud.
Small businesses are not the only ones migrating to the cloud. IT management service providers have brought many large enterprise clients with them to the cloud as the standard IT service range expands to include cloud storage and software-as-a-service offerings. The convenience of storing, accessing and processing data on a service provider’s servers via an Internet connection is appealing to most businesses. However, many are concerned about issues of cloud security, and enterprise needs security to survive.
A Question of Security
With the rise of big data, increasing rates of cybercrime, and tightening data protection and privacy legislation, many businesses of all sizes face a dilemma: more data than ever is at greater risk than ever, yet it must be secured more thoroughly than ever.
Security was, until recently, a deal-breaker for some companies considering cloud services. Survey results from technology research group IDC show that in 2008, security was the main concern that prevented adoption of cloud services for business. In 2011, however, less than half the responding companies cited security worries as their leading concern, and the number of businesses already using cloud computing services is rising swiftly.
Safer in the Cloud
By outsourcing to the cloud not only data security and storage, but also the processing locations of the data, vital files may be doubly protected from hacking. Cloud computing security features may include firewalls; high strength data encryption; customisable user privileges; activity logs and auditing; anomalous activity notifications; and secured collaborative workspaces.
Even entry-level cloud computing services, and those not explicitly security-related, can improve a business’ overall security because cloud services are maintained and secured by the provider rather than relying on the user to keep antivirus programs up-to-date and apply recommended software security patches. Jim Reavis of Cloud Security Alliance has commented that for small and medium businesses, migrating to the cloud “ends up being almost in all cases a security upgrade.”
If you’re curious about cloud security and how Match2Lists helps to protect your data, feel free to get in touch or take a look at our security statement. You can also take a free trial of Match2Lists to see how it works for you.
Happy matching!
A few updates, one that will affect all accounts and a couple that affect our Enterprise accounts only.
- New Global List Country
- New Scrutineer User account type * Enterprise
- New User permissions on Projects * Enterprise
When adding any list into Match2Lists it has always been the case that you had to specify the Country that best described the data being loaded so that we could best apply country specific algos and transformations as part of the matching process.
These transformations and country specific procedures are only necessary on regional and geographical data such as contact and address details as well as local Company names and identifications.
Now if your lists do not contain such data or a mixture of many countries simply select “Global” in the “List country” dropdown when uploading a list. Match2Lists will then process the list accordingly. One thing to note is, like country specific lists, you can only create projects using lists of the same “List country”.
Having been talking to some of our Enterprise customers we’ve added a new User Account Type – Scrutineer.
The Scruntineer User Account can access and only work on Projects that have been assigned to them. They do not see any Lists or other Projects you may have in your account.
With the creation of the Scruntineer it is now necessary to grant permission on Projects. A new section to the Create a Project screen has been added for this. All non-Scruntineer users within your organisation are automatically granted access to the Project which helps keep the process quick and easy.
The new User Access Permissions section for Projects.
You can change access permission to existing projects by making the necessary changes to the new “User Access” section of the Project Details screen.
Tip: To make a project private so no other user sees or has access to it – simple uncheck all users. You can change these settings at anytime be going back to the Project Details screen.
That about wraps it up for this update, some great changes and advancements continue to be made – we hope you think so too, please let us know what you think.
Until next time – happy matching.
What happens to businesses when data quality is low? Can you ‘muddle through’ a data quality disaster and come out the other side still firing on all cylinders?
Bad Data = Big Costs
A recent report from Artemis Ventures indicated that poor data quality costs the United States economy roughly $3.1 trillion per year. To provide some perspective on this unimaginably large figure, that’s twice the size of the US Federal deficit. An estimate from the US Insurance Data Management Association puts the cost of poor quality data at 15% to 20% of corporations’ operating revenue.
Meanwhile in Australia, David Howard-Jones of management consultancy Oliver Wyman confirms a similar trend. Speaking at an Institute of Actuaries of Australia conference, he said, “Overall estimates of the costs of poor data quality are 15 to 25 percent of operating profits for insurers and potentially even more for large banking groups.”
Low Quality = Low Efficiency
Even more jawdropping than the cost of poor data quality is the typical lack of action to improve it. The flawed data may be easily corrected with a cloud data quality tool like Match2Lists, but flawed data quality systems are often allowed to continue producing data that could have been better. And that’s when the wider effects of low data quality come into play: where there are data quality issues, the data is less trusted. Decisions become overly conservative and opportunities are missed due to lack of timely, reliable, usable data.
Failure to attend to the sources of data quality underperformance leads to unmanaged workflow friction that can slow a business’ operations and reduce their effectiveness. In turn, revenue and growth will be limited, and the economy as a whole will be carrying one more data dead-weight.
Hollis Tibbetts, managing director and principal analyst at Artemis Ventures, commented, “About half of IT executives consistently agree that data quality and data consistency is one of the biggest roadblocks to them getting full value from their data, yet consistently organizations fail to address this issue.”
So, what now?
1. Get Clean
Use Match2Lists to compare and match data, remove duplicates from your data, and merge lists of data without introducing new duplicates. It’s swift, smart and simple.
2. Stay Clean
Keep working. Data quality isn’t a one-off task or even a static goal to work towards; it’s a continuously evolving set of strategies that require ongoing contemplation and implementation. Evaluate your data and processes regularly, and fix any quality issues that you find.
3. Fix The Plumbing
Look upstream. Look downstream. Where is your data coming from, and how does it reach its users? What happens to it along the way? Now look again. Did you answer those questions by observing, or did you make assumptions? What really happens to your company’s data may not be what you intended or what you anticipated. Identify the problem points and involve the relevant teams in developing solutions.
Don’t leave poor data quality unmanaged. Take a free Match2Lists trial to check your data for duplicates and inconsistencies now.
Happy matching!
As of version 3.3.0
A lot of new features have been added to the site in this update all with the intention of making the site and the tool even easier to use.
- New Account Homepage
- New Project Selection page
- New Filters added to Lists and Projects pages
- Change Updated Advanced DeDupe output customisation
- Change “Tel/Fax” datatype has been separated to just “Telephone”…
- New …a new datatype of “Fax” has been created
One of the first things you will notice when logging into your account is the new homepage. Here you will find out latest feeds from the Blog as well as our latest Tweets from Twitter so you can keep up to date with the latest goings on at Match2Lists. Please follow us and join in the conversations, we love hearing from our users.
Also on the homepage is where we will announce any large updates or important new features coming soon to the tool – so check it regularly as we’ve got some great things lined up…!
The new Project Selection page was added to aid in selecting the correct project type for your data matching requirements. If you were unsure as to what or why you would want to Merge 2 Lists or what actually happens in a DeDupe project, this page explains these things to you so you know exactly what project type you choose to get the results you need.
One of the features our Enterprise customers have asked for an easier way to manage the large number of lists and projects they have. So we added filters to the Lists and Project pages so its quicker and easier to find the list or project required. We released this to our Enterprise customers and they loved it so much we thought we would add it to everyone’s account. We think its a great new feature so why not tell us what you think, we would really like to get your feedback.
As always your feedback helps make changes. Any suggestions or improvements to the features we’ve added or what you think we can make to Match2Lists please let us know, we discuss and read every one. Many thanks.
Until the next time, happy matching.
