Data Services
Is your data stored in multiple spread sheets, and other applications? Do you struggle to pull out key information because it’s structured badly and full of errors?
Many SMEs use Microsoft Excel for capturing their business data when they first start out because it’s practical, relatively cheap, and easy to get going.
There is nothing wrong with using Excel or similar applications, but as a minimum, you should ensure the data is structured correctly: so many people design spread sheets for visual appeal and don’t consider the importance of layout and structure – particularly for analysis and report creation.
Excel is a powerful application, but few utilise even a fraction of its true capability, because they lack the skills beyond it's basic functionality.
Just as Excel is easy to use, its also easy to make mistakes (duplicate records, inconsistent formatting). These sorts of errors may seem trivia at the time of creation, but think about the future, when you might want to analyse customers by postcode say, or sales by quarter etc. The data would be too unreliable. Excel does have a number of tools for validating data entry, adding constraints and so on, but unless these are hard coded into the workbook using VBA programming, they can easily be over ridden.
So how can we help?
We have a great deal of experience working as both end users and 'cleansers' of data, so there will be very little we haven't seen before. We have worked with data from all types of organisations (large and small) including multiple government departments (HMRC, Revenue, Police, Imigration, DVLA, Companies House, NHS, ONS etc.) and commercial data including Experian, Dunn & Bradstreet, insurance and many more. We realise that every situation is unique, so if you have a particualr issue that is not covered below, then please contact us. We are also security vetted to SC level should this be a requirement.
Data cleansing
We can help ‘tidy up’ your data so you get more out of it. This includes error checking, de-duplication, spelling correction, case correction, re-formatting of dates, postcodes etc. to make consistent, re-designing and merging tables (where required) to make them analysis friendly and so much more ...
Data enhancement
We can enhance your data by creating subsets of data, or maybe combining it with 3rd party/commercial data sets and open source. For example, you might want to include demographics to target specific types of potential customer by location. If you have anything specific in mind, please email brief details and we will get back to you.
Data lists
We will shortly be offering a range of data lists that can be purchased and downloaded from our website. Or if you use our data enhancement services, we can add it to your own data. We will provide more information as soon as this service goes live.
