Wednesday 10 March 2010
frequently asked questions
We like to think that our clients can rest easy knowing that we’re looking after their data. But there are always key questions that they need to ask, and have answered to their satisfaction; here is a small selection. Click on the appropriate question immediately
below to see our response:
What’s the difference between a database and a simple list…and what exactly is a ‘relational’ database?
A quick primer:
Data, at its most basic, is any type of information that you
intend to subsequently retrieve in some useful fashion. To us, data
is the ongoing resource, the input if you like, whereas
a list is an output, that you generate, use or make
available to others at a point in time and then discard until you need
such a list again in the future, based on updated data.
A database is simply a structured collection of data. To capture, store and retrieve that data, you need a database management system. Data can be retrieved globally (ie. all of it at once) or selectively, against any criteria that exist in the database, singly or in combination, including statistical or random samples for research or consultation purposes.
A relational database isn’t a complicated concept (although some companies would like you to think that it was!); it merely stores data in a number of tables that are ‘related’ to each other in some way, and is a more efficient way of storing data. The alternative is to put all information in one big table (usually referred to as a ‘flat file’), which for all but the simplest database requirements is usually too cumbersome and inefficient.
What types of data does ABC deal with?
ABC is equipped to manage virtually any type of data, although our primary focus is on personal and organisational data, eg.
In a nutshell, if you can make a list out of it, we can create and manage a database using it!
What are the applications for these types of data?
ABC has undertaken a wide range of projects, involving applications such as:
Basically the question we most enjoy asking our customers, or prospective customers, is ‘If you could wave a magic wand and have whatever you wanted*, what would it look like?’ This usually triggers a discussion, out of which emerges a brief and, more often than not, an implementation plan (*in the context of database management, of course!)
I already have a (customer/supplier/other stakeholder) database.
It may not be perfect (although we always seem to get a load of ‘gone-aways’ after every mailing),
but it sort of works, and my clerical staff maintain it for nothing, in between their normal work.
Why should I consider outsourcing it? Isn’t this a risk?
Good questions. Many of our customers originally start from this standpoint but end up changing their initial view for a variety of reasons, including:
Where we encounter scepticism, this is based on the fact that outsourcing potentially
carries a degree of risk. We agree. One of the most prevalent concerns
is that the contracting organisation will not have the same degree of
commitment to the organisation as the organisation’s own staff.
However ABC is able to demonstrate, through our professionalism in handling
data for many clients, that this need not be an issue.
So if you know what you want to achieve, but don’t know — or even don’t care — what the IT solution looks like, so long as you achieve your objectives, ABC can provide the answer. This applies equally whether you’re fully computerised, but want to leave the management of your data to the professionals, or whether you’re still largely paper-based but still need to bring your database management into the 21st century.
A key issue for us is that we need to have access
to our data in-house so that staff can view it at
any time, knowing it’s always up-to-date. We
couldn’t do that if ABC managed it for us. Or
could we?
Of course! Quite a number of ABC’s customers do just that, since we see no incompatibility between an enterprise having its data professionally managed by a specialist organisation while at the same time having up-to-date access to it themselves. In fact they have the best of both worlds: their staff have access to the data but without any of the hassle of maintaining it, preparing data for mailing etc, leaving them free to get on with their ‘proper’ job. One solution, especially if you operate on a number of sites or have a dispersed organisation, is for your staff simply to view their own data using a browser; so although we are managing the data in the background, as far as users were concerned it might just as well be on their own PCs! Our mnemonic to summarise this is: WWW = Whatever data you need, Whenever and Wherever you need it. (see also next question)
Our database is one that we need to share with a wide spectrum of interested
parties, ideally without us having to respond to requests ourselves,
and preferably where the information is available 24 hours a day/7 days
a week. What’s the best solution here?
This is a growing requirement that ABC is called upon to address regularly.
The solution is invariably to upload data to the web, password-protected
if necessary. There are many advantages to this approach: one is that
users appear to be browsing a local resource, even though the data is
sat on our ColdFusion-enabled webserver; two, the data can be accessed
from anywhere, be this staff working from home or away from the office,
or your customers, other stakeholders or even the general public in
their own offices and homes; three, it doesn’t matter whether
the data is in the public domain or is a confidential, in-house resource†;
this merely affects how you allow users to access it.
†The work we did for CCPO
is a good example of a database that is both public and private; anyone
can view public records, but only authenticated users can view private
records. To see how this operates, visit
www.ccpo.info [choose the Search by Category option, where any of
the first three categories, singly or in combination, will yield results].
My requirements are even more generic than the above, where I need to
let (prospective) customers know what my organisation has on offer at
any time, by giving them access to an up-to-date catalogue or
‘billboard’. How would you address this?
You mean, apart from originating and uploading a suite of data-driven webpages to which you can direct those prospective customers?! Basically, just about every project that we currently undertake has a web design element, and we have therefore evolved a competence in presenting many different types of information in simple yet visually appealing ways. And since information is never static, we develop webpages that derive their underlying information from a data ‘bank’ that can be refreshed either by you, or by us, acting on your behalf. The key is that this body of data must allow users to find what they’re looking for, quickly and easily. Our case studies page describes a number of client websites, but PROGRESS is probably a good example of a user-friendly ‘portal’, designed and maintained by us.
I’m worried that ABC will regard my database
project as either laughably small or it will be
too big for you to handle. How do I know if my
database requirements are in your ball park?
Well, unless you’re planning a British Gas-style flotation to millions of prospective shareholders, we can probably help. One of our smallest databases (but the highest profile) is the Top 1000 companies in the UK, with their top management (with over 3,000 people), the largest have been over 200,000 parents or around 250,000 subscribers to the Teachers Magazine. But whatever size your database is to start with, it can grow as large or as quickly as you like, since our database architecture is totally scaleable (although sadly only up to 1 billion records per table!)
What if my database needs hundreds of changes making
to it every week, and we need to call off selected
mailing lists potentially every day?
This sounds remarkably like the Schools & Colleges Database, which we built from scratch in 1992–3, up to a total of well over 30,000 records. It is probably the most active we have ever managed, with more than 600–700 changes a week at the busiest times of year. Like every other database we manage, it is swept regularly with a range of integrity checks, in this case weekly. As a result, its UK addresses are 100% postcoded and ‘gone-aways’ (the high level of which is why we were asked to create the database in the first place) virtually dried up. We believe that this makes it a ‘reference standard’ or benchmark for other mailing databases.
That’s fine for some people, but my database
is only needed six times a year, when we send out
our bi-monthly newsletter, bulletin, update or magazine.
Surely we don’t need it as actively managed
as all that?
At the other end of the spectrum we manage a number databases that sound just like yours. However, it usually does not make sense to put your data in ‘cold storage’ when it’s not in use. Why? Because there are always changes to phone exchanges and postcodes, and if we’re doing our job properly we should be continuously receiving amendments direct from your data subjects, and updating your database as these arise. That way, you can call off your data at any time, secure in the knowledge that it will always be as up-to-date as possible.
What if the information that I need converting into
a database is sat around in paper files, Word documents,
Excel spreadsheets or my Sales Ledger? What if I’ve
got several different lists, all in different formats,
probably with loads of duplicates?
No problem — we deal with this all the time.
Firstly we would key in all information that
has not yet been ‘data captured’. Next we would re-format
any existing data in a standardised format. Once all of your data was
in a single database, complete with all ‘source’ codes and
other identifiers, we would clean it and validate the postcodes, adding
these to all UK addresses that lacked them. Finally we would use our
various de-duplication utilities to purge spurious records, before presenting
you with an extremely powerful communications tool — your own
database!
Hold on. When you say ‘standardised format’,
my data needs to have all sorts of fields that are
essential to be able to select the records I want.
With ABC will I be restricted in some way?
Absolutely not, and quite the reverse! While name and address information corresponds to a standardised structure, ie. with dedicated town, county and postcode fields (rather than just ‘top down’) and ideally also with separate title, initials/forename and surname fields, in terms of codes or identifiers you can broadly have whatever you need, and further fields can always be added later. However, one Golden Rule is only store what you really need (avoiding ‘analysis paralysis’!); another is never store values that are entirely derivable from somewhere else.
I want to be able to secure the highest possible mailings
discounts from Royal Mail. To do this my data needs
to be fully postcoded, and kept that way. How would
ABC ensure this?
First of all, every record is validated against the Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) as it is entered, using the most robust address management software available, Quick Address Pro. Second, we sweep all databases periodically to ensure the integrity of the postal and other information eg. STD codes. Third, we subscribe to the Royal Mail’s Postcode Update service which we use to make locality and postcode data corrections. We can of course Mailsort your mailing data for you, and prepare all the necessary reports for you or your mailing house. We can also distribute your mailings for you as well if you wish (see next question).
If you were to manage my data, it would make sense for ABC also to undertake
my e-mailings for me. Are there any issues here?
Only what to do with all the money you’ll save! ABC staff have more than twenty years experience of undertaking mailshots of all types, and over recent years we have developed this into a sophisticated competence in e-mail broadcasting. So whether your requirements are for short updates or alerts, distributing professional-looking HTML e-newsletters, database-driven information-gathering exercises that direct respondents to one or more web forms, or any combination of these, we can provide you with a rapid-response, highly cost-effective distribution service. All you need do is agree with us the content, format, recipient parameters and any response mechanisms, and we’ll do the rest!
You’ve mentioned links to mailing houses. We use a particular
organisation and we wouldn’t want to change this. Would ABC be
able or prepared to operate in partnership with them? To what extent
would we need to manage that interface?
We are often asked by clients to operate in conjunction with one or
more of their other suppliers — in
particular with mailing houses, with whom have a great deal of empathy
and interoperability experience, having dealt with probably 30 different
players over the years. Working across boundaries such as these we strive
always to establish and maintain close working relationships, and to
dovetail our operations into their preferred ways of working, rather than
the other way round. Basically we would provide your mailing data, mailsorted
if you wish, to them in more or less any format they specified; we are especially
proud of the fact that we have never encountered an output requirement
we could not meet. Once we had established their needs and the relevant
contact points, you would not need to oversee the ongoing transfer of
data between us. To us the provision of data to others is not simply like
handing off the baton in a relay race. The perception of the database management
service we provide, either between us and the client and/or between
us and the client’s business partners, both by a client’s internal
and external customers, must therefore be seamless, with no possibility
of ‘underlap’ ie. of things falling between the cracks.
One thing which really clogs up my department
is responding to requests eg. for brochures, literature,
factsheets etc. Do you offer a ‘fulfilment’
service as an adjunct to managing data? How best
would we channel these requests to you?
We certainly can and do offer this service. The most effective method is for ABC to receive literature or other requests directly (NB see next question) — either from a web form, by e-mail, fax or by post (to a PO Box or Freepost address, if necessary ‘invisibly’ redirected using Admail). We would then process these in conjunction with a nominated mailing house or other partner organisation — either yours or ours.
We particularly want our customers, employees
or suppliers to think they are still dealing with
us; is that achievable?
In a word, Yes, since most of our customers operate this way. Where ABC interfaces with a client’s own customers on their behalf, we always behave towards those internal and/or external customers as though we were the client. In particular, we strive to demonstrate the professionalism and product knowledge that customers would expect from their direct contacts with that organisation.
Let’s assume you’re the XYZ organisation in Bristol. We could set up any or all of these: dedicated webpages with data capture forms, a dedicated e-mail address, a fax number or a postal redirection (Admail) facility to enable us to automatically receive all correspondence addressed to ‘XYZ, Freepost 123, Bristol’. All you need to do is publicise these contact points on your website, or in your literature, advertising or correspondence. That way interested parties are, in effect, corresponding with you. (We can do the same with voice, but note that since customers are unaware that they are not directly connected to your organisation they often stray into areas that are best handled by your own people, eg. credit control issues.) The big difference is that data can be entered much more quickly than if it had gone via your own premises, making the data that much more up-to-date. This applies equally whether these direct contacts are sales enquiries, fulfilment requests or merely database amendments from your data subjects.
Sometimes I may have requirements that fall outside
the 9 to 5 window; can ABC handle this?
No problem. If you’re talking about the odd unforeseen panic, we are always happy to put ourselves out to help our customers; we have one case study that is a particularly good example of this! But note that if you habitually phone up at 4.30 every Friday with a ‘rush’ job that you need for Monday morning and which you’ve known about for weeks, then we may be less than 100% keen to have you as a customer!
© Arden Business Consultants 10/03/2010
E & O E
