What's lead scoring got to do with data quality? Way more than you think, according to a recent report. In fact, the SiriusDecisions study, "The Impact of Bad Data on Demand Creation," shows that following best practices in data quality generates a 66 percent increase in revenue, thanks to improvements in lead scoring. In today's economic climate, that's nothing to sneeze at.

The level of dirty data is what separates typical B2B organizations from those that follow best practices. Even at process-optimized companies, 10 percent of customer and prospect records contain critical data errors, according to Sirius. These errors can include incorrect demographic data, out-of-date disposition, and other basic flaws. At the average company, however -- one that fails to follow best practices for data management -- the data-error rate can balloon to as high as 25 percent. In either case, the amount of data doubles every 12 months to 18 months, resulting in a comparable rise in overall data-cleansing costs -- while potential revenue from those flawed records is never realized. This is summarized by what the Sirius report calls the "1-10-100" rule: "It takes $1 to verify a record as it is entered, $10 to cleanse and de-dupe it, and $100 if nothing is done, as the ramifications of the mistakes are felt over and over again."

"Despite its criticality to the business, the databases of B2B organizations are akin to an attic, filled with contents that have not been properly labeled, managed, and maintained," writes Jonathan Block, author of the report and senior director of research at SiriusDecisions. "Most B2B marketing executives lament the status of their databases, but have had a difficult time convincing senior management of the need not just to temporarily clean things up but to permanently change the manner in which data is treated."

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