Bearing in mind a company’s database is its crown jewels, how it is processed and managed is a matter for serious consideration. Deciding on what kind of data consultant should be given the responsibility of managing your database is certainly not an easy task.
In brief, data bureaux have the advantage of being entirely independent of the data they are processing. They do not own it but specialise in processing, manipulating and handling data (data management). Data providers, owners and brokers, meanwhile, focus on selling (renting) prospect data to end-users.
Today’s data bureaux can be seen as a catch-all for database marketing, says Ol Janus, operations director of data consultancy, EHS Brann Discovery. They can offer every service from data processing to building the database, analysing customer data and sometimes even serving as a data supplier. However, he warns, it is critical for B2B marketers to find the right balance of services to ensure customer data is well maintained and used to benefit their business.
Ian Johnstone, MD at data bureau QBase, says, Because we are independent of the data we handle, our processing is pure, so we have a better insight into how the data is going to work best for clients. We invest in expertise and technology.
Choice on the market
The majority of bureaux handle B2C data, mainly because it is easier to process. According to Vic Godding, MD of Developing Data and chair of the DMA’s B2B committee, Bureaux that know and understand B2B data are few and far between, he says. I can name six and within these, some have decided to specialise by client sector.
Lee Waite director of marcoms agency Flamethrower, says bureaux provide a useful service, Bureaux can validate all the telephone numbers on a file; provide out-of-business indicators when the company failed and show relocation files giving new addresses.
Deduplicating (merging or data-matching) is a good example of an area where bureaux can provide a quality service. There are basic, cheap software packages such as DedupeIT [which automate this process] but the results are never fantastic, whereas many data bureaux have written their own complex software, Waite continues. As a result, an increasing number of companies are outsourcing database management.
However, the services bureaux provide can (and should) stretch way beyond data-matching and cleansing. Every dataset will present different complexities and a good B2B bureau should be able to deal with almost any data presented to them, even if this involves bespoke programming to deal with specific oddities or complexities, says Jon Hinkley, MD of Greenstone Data Solutions. If you are being offered a completely standard, non-flexible solution, you might not be talking to the right bureau.
QBase, for example, has entered the CRM arena with publisher Emap. Large publishers know they have valuable customers who are serial buyers across brands and services, but there is no easy way of identifying them, says Ian Johnstone.
For Emap, we built a marketing database by combining all the transaction data from subscriptions, exhibitions and conferences across the company to make one view of the customer, he says. It took two years to build and we rebuild it 12 times a year, so we can carry out counts, analysis and business insight work on it.
Bureaux also work with customers’ electronic datasets to provide creative strategies. This allows them to put specific offers to specific people, rather than sending out one million emails and annoying one million people, says Johnstone.
Basket analysis is another option, looking at a large inventory of products or part numbers, to explore relationships with products purchased in order to find patterns of behaviour and to put related offers forward to first-time buyers. Johnstone says online retailer Amazon offers an excellent example of this, I am always amazed by the accuracy of Amazon. They offer me CDs I have already bought.
Technical capabilities
Technology is having a marked affect on the services data bureaux are offering, giving greater flexibility and broader scope. A case in point is QBase, which is moving towards complete disclosure of data with its customers. They can see our project management processes and the data itself online via secure HTML pages, says Johnstone, so they know where we are with their projects and don’t phone us all the time, which we love. Dataloader Online reports for them in realtime.
The company has also developed Customersearch.net in conjunction with Reed Elsevier, a high-speed counting tool that selects from 3.6 million individuals in 2.4 million locations. Organisations select data according to whom they want to talk to (managers, FDs, etc.), what industries they are in (telecoms, personnel, purchasing) and where they are based (South East, Midlands) and then order online on a pay-as-you-go or subscription basis.
As Hinkley of Greenstone points out, online data processing is, by nature, standardised and tends to lack flexibility. But these services can be great for fast turnaround jobs, particularly on smaller volume work, he says.
And regarding traditional bureau services, the technology associated with deduplication and matching is better than ever before, says Hinkley. This is perhaps the most difficult area of data-processing historically, particularly in B2B. A good B2B bureau will now use more than just an alpha-numeric matchkey and fuzzy matching rules to bring the right duplicates together and keep different records apart.
Greenstone has invested heavily in this area and our advanced similarity-matching software uses matchkeys plus more then 40 similarity algorithms, which significantly increases the accuracy of matching B2B data, he says. It has brought considerable improvements in the quality of our B2B clients’ data, databases and campaign files: improvements that translate directly to the bottom-line.
Changes in the air
Although the current climate is challenging, there is a strong future for those B2B bureaux offering a comprehensive, professional service. At present, B2B mailing indeed direct marketing activity is low and as a result the fight for B2B business is intense, says Godding of Developing Data. Sometimes data is being given away on the back of processing work or the other way round. This leaves bureaux that do not own data at a disadvantage. There is certainly a place for traditional bureaux and they can rest assured that the B2B work they do will not be offered overseas: B2B is so complex that I defy anyone without knowledge of the industry and data to get involved.
Those with an edge a quality, flexible service at sensible, competitive rates will benefit from the growing number of SMEs that are recognising the value of their data. In our experience, the SME client in particular is looking for bureaux to do more than just clean data, says Hinkley of Greenstone. Understanding their business and the B2B data market, and using that knowledge to help the client implement an effective direct marketing strategy, is becoming almost as important as being able to understand the core data-processing.
When to use a bureau
For companies trying to determine when to use bureaux to process data, the deciding factors are: the complexity of the task, volume of data and readily available software solutions, weighed against the knowledge and skill to control the exercise within the client’s operation. However, volumes usually prohibit doing it inhouse.
Clean, accurate and up to date data that provide usable, accessible information is a fundamental requirement of all companies and data bureaux are a good starting point for that. Prices start at around £20 per thousand names and most clients’ prospect database will be around 20,000 records, so it is cost-effective.
Whether this is an ad hoc or ongoing relationship depends on requirements. Hinkley claims, Some organisations may outsource their marketing database to a bureau and rely on it to advise on other data services; others will be able to host and manage their database inhouse, calling on a bureau for periodic data cleansing updates or generation of campaign files as required. A good bureau will help each client work out what is the best solution for them.
Given the number of variables in the industry, it is also essential that companies help themselves. Have a good idea of what you want from your data bureau and articulate that clearly.
Do not be scared to drop bureaux that have not provided what is required. But remember, it is essential that both parties understand what is needed: any bureau is only going to be as good as the brief it is given.
