Data onboarding is the process of transferring offline unfamiliar data to an online environment for marketing purposes. This process is mainly used to connect offline customer records with online users by matching identifying information gathered from offline datasets to retrieve the same customers in an online platform.
While great analysis can be gathered from poorly structured data, onboarding data from outside sources can be a contradictory course of action. It can be done the right way but slowly or it can be done quickly with errors. In the former route, one can draw on the expertise of engineers or IT professionals while in the second route, it can be done yourself with not always the best tools.
Since data is the driving force behind many companies, it is important to onboard data in the right way. Here are some steps to consider:
#1: Structure the Data
Some data, such as APIs, JSON files, or weblogs, come in machine language or complex hierarchy and are therefore unreadable by humans. Any data like this must first be put into readable form so the assessment can begin.
#2: Assess Data Accuracy
Identifying a dataset’s flaws and reviewing for accuracy is critical to effective data onboarding. Missing values, invalid or mismatched data, and value distribution anomalies are all flaws that must be fixed in your data.
#3: Address Data Inconsistency
Once all the data is assessed, problems can be solved. This is where most of the data onboarding work is done. Depending on a company’s needs, specific formatting and standardization, as well as a cross-reference, is needed.
#4: Build a Consolidated View
Once the data is cleaned, use Excel or Access to help easily combine the data in a consistent view. There are a variety of tools that offer an array of functions to join datasets, to pivot and unpivot data, aggregate values, and derive key indicators.
If you are dealing with disparate external and internal datasets and limited availability from developers, you likely are looking for a scalable and collaborative solution to expedite the data onboarding process. If so, click the link below for more information.
