The Technical Mystery Tour

Roll up. Roll up for the magical mystery tour.

Boxing Day 1968 I think, might have been 1967. My whole family and half of the Western world all gathered around their TV sets to see the Fab Four’s TV film The Magical Mystery Tour. I was 6 or 7 and loved The Beatles. I am told I once gave a lively rendition of She Loves You in the doctor’s surgery as a toddler which raised a few smiles. Unfortunately however, as the recent repeat reminded me, Magical Mystery Tour offered a few good tunes but the plot may have been over-influenced by some artificial stimuli and four creative egos rapidly spinning out of control.

However, the idea of a tour ought to remain high on our agendas, magical or otherwise. EReco are keen to show customers our secure facility in the depths of East Grinstead, because we know it is what sets us apart from the crowd. And more potential customers ought to take up our offer because when disposing of your data, you ought to do a proper risk assessment.

What? I heard a collective sharp intake of breath there. Disposing of your data? That isn’t what you are doing at all, is it? You are disposing of old IT assets, redundant kit, sometimes broken kit, but you are protecting your data, aren’t you?

Well, yes AND no.

You are engaging a partner to deal with your data, and if that partner is reputable you are protected by their systems, and insurance. So clearly your intention is not to throw the baby away with the bathwater. But, and it is a very big but, your data is still there and it is still your responsibility. If something happens you are going to need to prove that you exercised your duty of care.

Clearly it is not practical for every business to visit their supplier. If your disposals are small and irregular, some reasonable due diligence would probably suffice. However, if you are a business of reasonable size a risk assessment probably makes a lot of sense. There are no margins of error here of course. No matter how large or small your disposal is, it only takes one hard drive to go missing or not get processed, and your data is ‘out there’.

Now I am bound to approve of this sort of thing of course. EReco has substance. Our facility is not a shiny palace of recycling heaven but it is efficient, substantial and secure. We may be many things but we are not back of the van sort of people. We are not fly by night. Believe me, if you visit and I will introduce you to Karen, our process queen, and she has a form for everything and a knowledge of ISO’s and WEEE regulations that ought to have John Humphrey’s and the Mastermind team quivering in their boots.

Her majesty emphasises what eReco has and many of our competitors do not. She is the one who makes us get our waste transfer notes right. She is Miss Compliance, a dotter of I’s and a crosser of T’s that our customers need. When my eyes glaze over, she is the one who reminds me, kindly, that like it or not we all have to get the paperwork in order.

It is what we charge for and what I cannot see how anyone offering free collections can offer. And it is tangible if you take a couple of hours out of your day to come and see it for yourself. Del-boy’s lock up may not be so impressive.

And Hey Bulldog, I promise not to sing.

John Lennon, the Business Cards in your Pocket and the Value of Data

I have a favourite story I often tell to anyone foolish enough to listen. It is on the theme of a builder never does a good job on his own house. Let me give you the short version as I am trying to add readers to this blog not drive them away.

When I worked for a roof tile manufacturer, the office building’s roof leaked all the time.

When I worked for an information business based on planning applications, my office was in a wing off of the main building which had been built without planning permission.

And when I worked for a company, a group even, which sold data and gave advice on how to build and maintain good databases, our own database was so full of holes John Lennon could have written another verse to A Day in the Life all about it, let alone Blackburn Lancashire.

Except that last one is true about every company I have ever worked for. No exceptions. Big or small, traditional or more radically minded, the one thing every single business had in common was that their data was complete pants.

Not all of them realised it. In fact, many were in denial. They spent thousands on CRM systems and tried to use their data intelligently but they all ignored the two basic facts – firstly if you allow rubbish to go in you will only ever get rubbish out, and secondly if you don’t use it, you lose it.

B2B data decays at some 30 percent a year. Think about that for a minute. You have ten records on your database. Do nothing and 3 of them will be gone within twelve months. Businesses close, people leave, change names, move offices. Database marketing has to produce enough activity to track that movement or you will soon be wasting your time.

Data in general is taken for granted. Collecting it and recording it should be everyone’s job because every email, every phone number, every name and job title, are worth quite a lot. Then it is up to the sales and marketing teams to use it properly.

Most don’t, at least not often enough, because data has no perceived value. That is why emails are entered onto systems incorrectly. That is why reps collect business cards in their jacket pockets but only ever take them out when they are off to the dry cleaners.

Oh yes, there is a lot of talk about the value of data, and you soon find what that value is when you rent a mailing list, but outside the relatively small group of people like me who find data really quite interesting everyone else acts like a teenage boy faced with some homework (Whatever, CBA, are you serious?).

And so we come to the nub of the matter for me these days. If you don’t value the data when you are using it, why should you value it when you are throwing a laptop away? Everyone loves getting a new laptop (unless is has Windows 8 on it – seriously, the person who developed that is an evil and twisted individual) and they hardly give a second thought to their old one.

This is an education problem, right from the get go. People don’t understand what data is, until they use some and then they have all sorts of complaints about it. Especially sales people. 'I mean, what do you expect if our customer records are so inaccurate?' 'We need these people’s email addresses and phone numbers for goodness sake. I mean it’s not that hard to get, I’ve had their card in my pocket for ages!'

My point is we value the laptop much more than we value the contents of the hard disk, and that makes no sense whatsoever. I remember getting told off as a young salesman for leaving my laptop in my car, because it cost £700.No mention was made of the data on it and that is by far the most important thing.

Although if you do steal a database, expect quite a few bounce backs...