Data Cleanup Terms Explained Visually
Most businesses are data driven today and this is why it is essential for you to have quality data. Accumulating a huge pile of data that has not been sorted out or cleaned in an effective way is not going to be useful to your business in anyway. If you would like your business to grow and become successful it is vital for you to focus on clean data. There are various tools available in the market that you can use in order to get clean data but most of the time a data cleanup tool could confuse you.
There are so many technical terms with data cleaning tools that business owners often shy away from using the tool because they don’t understand how the tool could prove to be beneficial for them. If you downloaded multiple data cleaning tools but you have no idea how these tools can help you then here is a simple breakdown of data cleanup tools in a lay man’s language that can help you visually understand what these tools actually do for you.
Aggregating
The aggregating tool in data cleansing is very important. This tool can help you to sum up the total amount of data that you have and give an aggregate. This can help you with various filters that you can set. For instance if you would like to check out how many records you have for a particular lane or street address, the aggregating tool can help you to figure it out. There are various levels for data cleansing, and if you would like to get around it in the best possible manner then trying to do it one step at a time is one of the most effective ways to sort out data and ensure that you get high quality data.
The aggregating tool will give you an aggregate of the number of leads that you have for particular filter such as a street address or a country. It will also help you to aggregate the number of leads you have for particular gender as well. There are various aggregating tools that you will find but if you can get your hands on a data cleansing tool that comes with aggregating as a part of the complete package then it is this tool that you should hold onto.
Filtering
The filtering tool is really simple. It can be used to help you get a specific set of data that you have been looking for. If you have records of a lot of data that include various categories but you only want one of those multiple categories then the filtering tool will help you bring the one category together. This helps to narrow down your selection to the kind of data that you are specifically looking for and it ensures that you get it within a matter of minutes. While most business owners try to get this done manually, they end up following a long and tedious process. Instead of struggling to filter data manually using the right data cleansing tools can help you get in touch with the potential customers sooner and help your business to grow.
Merging
Sometimes business owners would prefer to send out emails to potential customers or regular customer by addressing them with their name. In order for you to do this you need to have specific rows for the names as well as the email addresses of those customers. In order for you to sort the data in such a manner the merging tool comes in hand. It helps you to get the right format that you are looking for and help bring the names and email addresses of these customers side by side. This makes it easy for you to send an email with the use of their name.
Deduping
Deduping is an essential data cleansing tool because this tool helps you to get rid of any duplicate content that you will find on the data. One of the most annoying things that an employee can go through is to contact a customer multiple times. This annoys customers and makes them feel irritated. If you want to make sure that you get in touch with one customer only once through a particular marketing method then using the data deduplication tool is recommended. It is one of the smartest ways to ensure that your data is clean and well maintained. Data deduping is essential in order for your marketing efforts to pay off. It will also help you retain your current customers by not contacting them too many times.
Transforming
The transforming cleaning tool may seem to be very complicated but at the day it is also something that you can use to your benefit. Sometimes automated systems require data to be formatted in a particular way and this could make it difficult for you to use your automated systems effectively with the kind of data that you own. A transforming tool can help you bring two columns of data together and merge them into one effective column that can be fed into your system.
Data Cleansing
This is the most important data cleanup tool that you will find and this also helps you to maintain regular records rather than having to deal with inconsistency. If you have a column of gender and some of the records read ‘M’ to represent the male while half of it reads ‘Male’ then this data cleansing tool can help you to reformat the entire thing and either make it ‘M’ or ‘Male’ to look consistent. These little things matter if you want to maintain good quality data, not only for the employees but also for the number of automated systems that are around us today.
The kind of data cleansing tools that you use can eventually determine the kind of data that you own as an organization. Instead of keeping these data cleansing tools away it is highly recommended that you begin to try them one at a time and use them to your benefit.
Sohel is a software engineer by profession and a tech writer by passion, he writes about the latest technologies and latest applications and he has shared his experience and lots of innovative ideas at various technology blogs. You can follow him on LinkedIn.