Data Enrichment: How to Supercharge Your Business Data

As the business landscape becomes more data-centric, companies must utilize data enrichment to stay competitive and achieve lasting success. Data enrichment is the process of enhancing existing data with additional information to gain deeper insights and improve decision-making.

By tapping into the potential of data enrichment, businesses can access a wealth of valuable information that addresses their customers’ needs more effectively, predicts market trends, and drives growth. The benefits of data enrichment include creating a strong infrastructure for companies, making data easy to interpret and analyze, and enabling businesses to gain significant insights.

At CleverMaps, we specialize in bringing the location part that is missing in your data. Think about having information about your branches, their performance, and the number of customers. Inside your company, you may wonder why some branches don’t perform as well as you imagined they would.

Before you try to redesign your branch and pay for advertising to raise awareness, it is probably a good idea to consider whether the location of the branch is wrong in the first place. By filling in purchasing power within a 10-minute walking distance of every branch, we can find out if there is simply not enough potential to cover the branch expenses. This is an example of data enrichment playing an important part in uncovering hidden information.

What is Data Enrichment?

As mentioned before, data enrichment involves enhancing existing data with additional information to provide deeper insights and improve decision-making. It combines multiple data sources, both internal and external, to create a more comprehensive and valuable dataset.

For us at CleverMaps, the glue between internal and external information is usually the location. By adding information about the place and its surroundings, we help businesses understand whether they should take the opportunity and invest in the examined location or rather put their money somewhere with higher potential.

The process includes various tasks such as sorting records based on the administrative unit, city size, or type of location they are placed in, enhancing customer profiles with demographic and behavioral data, or valuing locations by the number of pedestrians crossing or the distance from the closest competitor.

However, the goal of each task is the same - to make a smarter decision by using the available data and understanding the quality of the location.

An example of an administration unit overview visualized in CleverMaps Studio.

Why Should Businesses Use Data Enrichment on a Daily Basis?

Effectively utilizing information is crucial for businesses to stay competitive and achieve long-term success. One of the primary reasons data enrichment is essential is that it helps organizations overcome the limitations of their existing data, such as customer data.

Often, businesses have access to a wealth of data, but it may be siloed, incomplete, or lacking context. Data enrichment bridges these gaps by integrating multiple data sources and adding relevant information to create a more holistic and valuable dataset.

One of the most common use cases that companies start with is geocoding – enriching data with geographical coordinates, which allows us to conduct a spatial analysis over the data. Without coordinates, it is impossible to connect location data with customers and branches.

However, having the ability to think spatially allows us to analyze the patterns in which customers visit our branches, how long they are willing to travel, or whether the presence of a competitor branch affects branch performance. Insights like this can later be used when selecting a new location for your business.

Customer data enrichment is vital for improving customer segmentation and targeted marketing campaigns, providing detailed insights for B2B sales teams, and ensuring compliance with new legal requirements.

For instance, a data enrichment tool, such as a Customer Data Platform, continuously enriches customer data while ensuring privacy and compliance, allowing businesses to adapt to changing customer needs and improve their offers and experiences.

How To Approach Data Enrichment?

When working on data enrichment, we at CleverMaps use various techniques and methods. Each of them has its pros and cons. Let’s go through some of the common methods used:

• Data Appending: Adding new data fields or attributes to an existing dataset, such as geographical coordinates, demographic data, or points of interest in the surroundings.

  
  

• Data Cleansing and Standardization: Identifying and addressing data inconsistencies, errors, cleaning addresses, self-intersecting lines, or polygons, etc.

  
  

• Data Matching and Linking: Connecting data from multiple sources based on common identifiers to create a more comprehensive dataset. The identifier can also be a spatial location of features.

  
  

• Geospatial Data Enrichment: Adding location-based information, such as demography, purchasing power, traffic data, or credit card transactions in the location.

  
  

• Sentiment Analysis: Using natural language processing to analyze unstructured data, such as customer reviews or social media posts, to extract insights about customer sentiment and preferences.

  
  

• Predictive Modeling: Leveraging machine learning algorithms to develop models that forecast trends, identify patterns, and anticipate customer behavior.

  
  

Data cleansing usually must happen before starting with data enrichment. Ensuring data accuracy is crucial for generating actionable insights and improving reporting outcomes. Then it’s possible to design effective data enrichment processes that are essential for breaking down data silos and creating a comprehensive view of the data.

Example of Points of Interest visualized in CleverMaps Studio.

Real-World Examples of Data Enrichment Playing a Pivotal Role in Data Quality

Every business has different needs, but nowadays, all of them are collecting data about their customers and sales. Only a few of them, however, are also acting on the data and can use the enriched data to gain a competitive advantage.

Here are two examples from real businesses that used data enrichment to their advantage and boosted their success by acting on the gained insights.

Data Enrichment for Retailers

First is a retailer that used data enrichment to locate their customers and branches. By adding geographical coordinates to customers and using loyalty cards, the company was able to pair purchases of each customer to their branches and correctly model a catchment area for each type of their branch. 

Now the company knows exactly what size of catchment area it requires for a new branch to be successful and can evaluate potential locations in CleverMaps Studio within seconds. With the help of data enrichment, they made sure they wouldn’t put a foot wrong when opening a new branch.

Data Enrichment for Marketers

A different utilization of data enrichment was used by an out-of-home advertising company which needed to correctly price billboards not just by their size but also by their attractiveness. They managed to add key information to each billboard, such as the number of people passing around the billboard each day, the traffic in the proximity of the billboard, or the count of points of interest around the billboard which suggests a more attractive location. 

External data sources, such as public databases and third-party providers, were crucial in obtaining this information. With the help of data enrichment, an attractiveness score was calculated, and the company was able to come up with a fair pricing model for each of the billboards.

Example of Catchment Area Analysis visualized in CleverMaps Studio.

Start with Data Enrichment Before It’s Too Late

In a data-driven world, data enrichment is a critical differentiator for businesses seeking lasting success. By enhancing existing data with additional information, organizations can gain deeper insights, make informed decisions, and drive strategic growth. Effective data governance is essential in this process to ensure data quality, security, and compliance.

At CleverMaps, we are committed to helping businesses of all sizes, from a hairdresser to an international bank, use the full potential of data enrichment. Our expertise in location intelligence enables us to deliver tailored solutions that drive tangible results. Whether you’re looking to enhance customer profiles, optimize supply chains, or uncover new market opportunities, we are here to guide you every step of the way.

Embrace the potential of data enrichment and discover a new world of possibilities. Contact our team of Geospatial Experts today to start your journey towards data-driven success.

Learn more about the data enrichment process and its benefits with CleverMaps.