December 20, 2023
Luke Hamilton shares three stories from our customers who leveraged BaseCap to triumph over bad data in 2023.
When we talk about data quality, it’s not uncommon for eyes to glaze over. I get it. The world of data is abstract and complex; most consider “data” to be solely a topic for their IT teams to deal with. Yet, more and more business leaders are turning their attention to their information ecosystem to create new and powerful competitive advantages.
Why? Because a company’s data—it’s quality, completeness, and maneuverability—affects every aspect of the business. Better data can mean fewer late nights for your operations team, more sophisticated product offerings, and better decisions made at every level of the business.
Here are three ways that our customers improved their data quality this year by discovering inefficiencies, missing information, and faster processes.
Client Story #1: Changing Mindsets
We recently had a customer who engaged with our Platform to manage highly complex mortgage documentation processes and make them more efficient and accurate.
To understand the value they were receiving from BaseCap, the client wanted to compare the results of data processing through our platform against the results of their previous (manual) method.
This seemingly simple comparison, however, would require hiring an outside analyst and spending weeks poring through the results from both processes to gain any meaningful insight.
One of my teammates had a suggestion: “If you need to run a comparison between BaseCap’s output and your traditional output, there’s no need to do it manually. You can actually run your traditional output through BaseCap to automatically compare the two results.
It was an “ah ha” moment for our client.
Manual reviews are so ingrained in our business culture, we can easily forget to even consider alternative paths. That’s where BaseCap is making a difference—not just in our technology’s unique capabilities, but the mindset change that our platform enables.
It’s not just one hour you save with automation; it’s a constantly compounding value that impacts every aspect of the company. When a dam leaks, it breaks. And now, our client’s data is flowing like a whitewater rapid.
"Manual reviews are so ingrained in our business culture, we can easily forget to even consider alternative paths."
Client Story #2 – Finding “Dark Data”
Another customer is testing how BaseCap can replace a multitude of manual processes: ETL, calculations, SQL queries, data transformations, and more.
During this proof-of-concept phase, we discovered something nobody expected.
In their existing process, data was being left out! As they captured raw data into systems where they could create reports and run queries, some of the data wasn’t transferred.
We call this “Dark Data” in the biz: information that is collected, but never used to derive insights or inform decision making.
The reason our customer was missing this data is that they, like most enterprises, used key identifiers to capture raw data. But all too often, the set of identifiers used doesn’t represent the entire population of data. It’s like taking a census of the United States by merging a list of dog lovers with cat lovers (the only two kinds of people, right?). But what if I told you there were some people who didn’t love cats OR dogs! Blasphemy, I know. But those individuals would be left out of the census, and we would be none the wiser.
When our customer used the BaseCap platform for the first time, the same problem occurred. Only BaseCap automatically discovered and brought attention to the issue, indicating that around 23% of input data was not captured by the provided identifiers.
Discovering this dark data and restoring it in downstream processes immediately impacted the client’s revenue as additional financial aspects were brought to light.
Client Story #3 – Lighten the load
Sometimes your job can feel like moving mountains. As companies create more products and revenue channels that multiply customer touch points, data volumes increase and the work to untangle that data becomes ever more difficult.
In some situations, it’s difficult to scale your team fast enough to handle growing workloads.
One of our customers faced a similar scenario, only they were affected by downsizing, which shifted the work of an entire team onto one individual’s plate. In the time that the organization strategized ways to right size and address outcomes like this, the individual still had to deliver results.
As any emergency responder will tell you, the first step in an overwhelming situation is to triage.
"We were able to automate ~70% of their workload within just two weeks"
We worked with our client to identify which daily tasks could most easily be automated. That way, they could spend their valuable time on projects that required their intellect and experience, rather than the grinding minutia of data preparation. In our implementation of BaseCap, we were able to automate ~70% of their workload within just two weeks. Our team was proud to be able to support this client with meaningful results during an extremely stressful period.
Of course, we believe that NOBODY should have to spend long hours on mind-numbing tasks like staring and comparing data. In the future where data prep is automated, enterprises will be able to apply more human resources to tackle customer challenges, innovate new ways of doing business, and create greater value.
