By Barley Laing, the UK Managing Director at Melissa Having inaccurate and duplicate data is a big issue for many organisations, with those in the retail sector being no exception. This was the key finding in our State of enterprise data quality 2025 report which highlights that 84 per cent of organisations struggle with inaccurate or duplicate data. The research also uncovered that data quality issues are the root cause of data-related challenges. Outdated contact information was at the top, cited by 32 per cent of respondents. In second place was compliance with evolving data regulations, raised by 25 per cent of interviewees, with incomplete customer profiles third, raised by 23 per cent of those questioned. Its important to recognise that each of these issues compounds when records are scattered across systems that do not synchronise in real-time. Further data-related challenges include identity fraud or impersonation cited by 17 per cent of respondents, duplicate records by 15 per cent, and difficulty in integrating multiple data sources was raised by 12 per cent of those questioned. While these three areas receive slightly lower scores their aggregate cost can surpass more visible pain points. Also, recognition that fraud losses tend to spike in isolation is important, while manual deduplication efforts often accumulate without warning or budget allocation. Focusing on the root causes of data problems and switching from ad hoc firefighting into a continuous, rules-driven process, can help.

Consider address verification

Putting processes in place that deliver address verification is a good starting point in delivering contact data accuracy on an ongoing basis. Then, with clean and verified addresses, providing a fast and frictionless shopping experience that consumers expect is achievable. Additionally, clean customer data can be effectively analysed to acquire valuable customer insight that can be used to keep them happy, with personalised communications and offers. And dont forget that by having up-to-date and standardised customer addresses its much easier to match and verify identities across multiple sources. This makes verifying the accuracy and legitimacy of an individuals address an important part of any identity related process, with any discrepancies between a claimed address and official records acting as red flags for fraud or compliance failures.

Investigate address lookup technology

A good way to collect accurate customer contact data at the onboarding stage is via an address lookup or autocomplete service. Such tools provide a properly formatted, correct address when the user starts to input theirs. This reduces the number of keystrokes required by up to 81 per cent when entering an address, speeding up the onboarding process, enhancing the entire experience, and making it much more likely that a purchase will be completed. Furthermore, similar tools can correctly collect email addresses, telephone numbers and names at the first point of contact.