Where’s the data hiding?

Where’s the data hiding?

Car shopping. I don’t think the process has changed much in 30 years. Sure, the internet came along and made it easier to put off walking on the lot, but you still end up having to go there, test drive and get invited back to the office “to talk.”

Last month we went back to the same dealer where we bought our previous 4 cars. We were met by a nice man who was very knowledgeable and hit all the right notes. Here’s what struck me about the process: As we went back and forth in the cubicle/table/whatever, there was no record of me in the system.

Well, that’s not totally true. Once we struck our deal and went into the paperwork all my old information magically showed up. I think he said, “Oh, there you are.”

I did an online marketing project for a car dealer a few years ago and it centered on harnessing their giant ad spend. (Someday I’ll write that one up because it was an education.) The main thing we struggled with in the analysis was gathering all the marketing and sales data. It was everywhere. Multiple websites, email inboxes, etc. And the data quality was all over too. Duplicate entries, non-standard entries, wrong data entries. (like “referrals” – it looked like they were the kings of referrals…until the sales people admitted that they used that as the default… most of the time.)

Long story short, you know where the best data was? The most accurate, most complete, most  close-to-perfect data was?

Yep. You guessed it. In the accounting system. To get paid, the dealership was required to be incredibly detailed in their record keeping. To stay out of trouble, the dealership had the incentive to stop and double check entries before committing them to the system. To satisfy their warranties they needed to account for who was sold what and when.

So, if you’re looking for the place where your best data is hiding, start there.

Good stuff.