Opportunity Loss as Gotcha Good Makes Maiden Voyage

Parry Sound ON Friday, September 7, 2007

This past Labour Day, the Gotcha Gang launched their own private yacht, aptly named the Gotcha Good, into the harbour at Parry Sound. Meanwhile, Perry Perkins watched from his office window, fuming over the calls he had received on late Friday afternoon. As Mr. Perkins watched the yacht sail deeper into Georgian Bay, he had the sinking feeling that he had become one of the gang’s most recent victims.

The source of his frustration was the fact that, during the promotion of a newly introduced metal opacity meter used by light manufacturers, his company’s promotional materials had failed to reach two of his best customers. Unfortunately for Perry, both of the customers had heard about the promotion at a recent association meeting and were extremely upset to discover that they had missed out on this special promotion. The opacity meter was a very rare and specialized product and was sought after with all the vigour of parents hunting down a Nintendo Wii last Christmas!

Angry and embarrassed, Mr. Perkins wanted to know just how could these important customers have been overlooked. So, the call went out for Inspector Hamish McMoney.

Answering the call, the Inspector’s first order of business was to dig into the company’s database, where he quickly found a glaring inconsistency. It seemed that, although the standardized code for designating a manufacturer had been defined as MFG, the database was spotted with non-standard codes like MAN and MANUF.

"Seeing that," the inspector said, "I already had a pretty good idea of what had happened. When I called up the records of the clients in question, they both had the wrong code. So, when Mr. Perkins asked for a mailing list of all manufacturers, the two customers were simply not included because the inaccurate data didn’t match the criteria for extraction."

Salesman, Reg Rediman, who was unavailable for comment on the situation, had landed both of the mis-coded accounts. Rediman was known in the office as a real go-getter, and was often praised for his ability to consistently land big accounts. However, he had never been a detail person, and it appears as though he had been entering his own sets of codes for various types of industry classifications.

Normally, Reg would have called these customers himself to let them know about the special and there would not have been any issue. Unfortunately, Reg was on vacation when this special was introduced and the mailing was sent out.

Clearly, bad and inconsistent data had undermined the success of Mr. Perkins promotion and severely jeopardized client relations with two valuable accounts. But how could this have been avoided? Inspector McMoney offers a few key suggestions.

"First, consider setting up field edits, which will prevent invalid data from being entered. Second, it’s important to initiate proper training programs and appropriate testing to monitor the overall effectiveness of the training, as well as continued performance and standards compliance.

"Typically, I’ve found that, when new systems are implemented and users undergo formal training, there is a sense of initial keenness. As a result, the data is usually pristine. Unfortunately, after a time, complacency can set in and the quality of the data can begin to suffer, especially when new employees are brought on board and not given adequate training. And this problem is not necessarily limited to segmentation or classification of data; it can also affect contact information, resulting in improperly formatted, and possibly undeliverable addresses.

"The third thing that mailers can do is to download and read the Database and Address Accuracy Primer from Highland Marketing’s website. It’s full of really great information to help you avoid being stung by the Gotcha Gang on the grounds of having bad and or inaccurate data."

Of course, it is difficult to quantify the exact cost of opportunity loss resulting from bad data, but given the recent launch of the Gotcha Good on its maiden voyage, we can be certain that the cost is significant. Fortunately, although the Gotcha Gang were seen sipping on fine wines and eating fine foods this past weekend, reports indicate that there was a lot of nervous chatter about how to deal with the ever increasing pressure that they were feeling from Inspector McMoney’s watchful eye.

Please note that the Gotcha Gang is not Canada Post. The Gotcha Gang represents the effect of decisions that result in paying excess postage, labour costs or minimizing opportunity. Most of these releases are based on actual events, though dates and locations may be fictitious.