B2B data enrichment: Automate business insight extraction
Let's face it: the B2B world has to handle a massive amount of data. From customer interactions and blog traffic data to transaction histories, an overwhelming amount of data is created daily.
But here's the kicker: if you don't use that data smartly, it can actually harm you. You could be leaking money—Forbes reports that poor-quality data could cost a staggering $15 million annually. It's not just about the cash, though. When valuable information is untapped or trapped in silos, it hinders decision-making, collaboration, and productivity.
B2B data enrichment merges information from diverse sources into a unified view, enhancing data quality and providing actionable insights. It cleanses, refines, and augments datasets for comprehensive analytics and informed business strategies, increasing efficiency and providing deeper customer insights. This article will delve into what data enrichment entails, its applications, and how to implement it efficiently.
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What is B2B data enrichment?
B2B data enrichment is the key to unlocking the full potential of your data. It enhances raw data with additional context and insights, which are especially valuable in a B2B context. Imagine taking sparse details from your company's contact forms and leads and fleshing them out with rich, third-party data from industry databases.
For instance, you may have a customer profile in your CRM that includes basic contact information. B2B data enrichment can take this profile to the next level by adding details like the customer's recent product inquiries, company size, and even preferred communication channels.
When integrated with financial data from your accounting software, you gain insights into customer behavior, spending patterns, and potential for upselling. Merging the two can help you perform a detailed analysis of the highest ARR by customers and form a better profile to perform deeper behavioral analysis.
Why B2B businesses can't afford to skip data enrichment?
With an average of 17 different software tools and over 28 data sources fueling the modern B2B enterprise, the sheer volume can be overwhelming. That's why data without enrichment is valuable but not ready to fuel growth.
Data enrichment brings clarity and usability to this data, ensuring that B2B businesses like yours aren't just data-rich but data-smart. Enriched data prevents you from relying on disjointed or outdated information that can lead to costly mistakes.
Here are a few reasons why you should implement B2B data enrichment for your business:
- Enhanced data reliability: Decision-making in B2B markets hinges on reliable data. Data enrichment weeds out the inaccuracies, giving you a crystal-clear view of the market and your customers.
- Real-time data synchronization: When operating with data from numerous sources, keeping everything up-to-date can be a hassle. Data enrichment tools keep your systems in sync, giving real-time insights for on-the-spot decision-making.
- Deeper customer understanding: By combining customer information from varied sources, B2B data enrichment reveals customer behavior patterns, preferences, and needs. This allows for hyper-targeted marketing campaigns and personalized customer experiences.
- Consistent data quality: Predictive analytics and accurate forecasting are only as good as your data. Enrichment ensures you're not working with the guesswork but with high-quality, consistent data.
- Regulatory compliance: Enriched data can help identify potential compliance issues before they become expensive legal battles.
What are the different ways to enrich data?
When navigating complex B2B operations, data enrichment isn't just beneficial; it's pivotal. Let's explore ways B2B companies can enrich their data.
Using scraping tools
Start by deploying scraping tools to gather additional data points from the web. They allow you to extract data from different sources, which can be later integrated into your systems.
Email parsing tools can extract data from incoming emails. Web scraping tools can extract data from web pages. Meanwhile, OCR software, like Nanonets, can help you extract data from documents, Excel, CSV, or more.
These tools can automatically capture relevant information from competitor sites, industry news, and B2B marketplaces.
Manual updates
There's no replacement for the human eye for reviewing the nuanced details. The process is simple: you find the data you want to enrich and enter the data into a worksheet or database. The main drawback is that it takes up much time, and ROI can be lower.
Automated data enrichment tools
You can use data enrichment software if you have a clear idea of what data you need to extract, the sources, and the databases to connect. Such software can automate:
- Data collection from multiple sources
- Data formatting, cleaning, and data aggregation
- Data sync across multiple sources
This is the best choice when working with high volumes of data daily. Here’s how Nanonets can supercharge your B2B data enrichment process:
Automatically import documents: Easily import files from diverse sources, ensuring all financial data is captured and analyzed for better customer profiling.
Extract data with OCR: Use optical character recognition to pull key data points from invoices, receipts, purchase orders, and other documents, streamlining the process of updating your systems with the latest information.
No-code workflow automation: Nanonets' platform empowers users to automate data enhancement tasks without coding expertise, saving time and reducing error rates.
Sync to your existing systems: Nanonets can seamlessly upload enriched data to your accounting software, ERP, or CRM, keeping your customer data current and accessible for strategic decision-making.
Want to automate repetitive data enrichment tasks?
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Nanonets for data enrichment
At Nanonets, we understand that B2B landscapes are complex and your data needs are unique. That's why we've tailored our data enrichment tool to help you turn unstructured B2B information into a streamlined flow of actionable insights.
With OCR software, 5000+ integrations, and advanced workflow automation, you can use Nanonets to extract, connect, and sync data across disparate sources.
Nanonets can extract data from different formats: PDF, Excel, CSV, emails, web pages, databases, images, scanned documents, and more. You can perform various data automation tasks like cleaning, collection, verification, aggregation, formatting, and more.
With seamless integrations, you can sync data across multiple data sources in real-time. Here are some use cases for which you can use Nanonets:
- Data Extraction
- Accounts Payable Automation
- Invoice Processing
- Email parsing
- Barcode data extraction
- Financial Automation
- Healthcare Automation
- Logistics automation
- Purchase order automation
Here's how you can automate B2B data enrichment using Nanonets:
- Login or create a free account on Nanonets.
- Select the incoming source of data from the data import options.
- Check the data that is extracted from the document. You have to do it once. Once set, this will be automated.
- You can either select from one of the data enrichment options on Nanonets or get help from our team to write a custom code for your use case.
Once done, you can use the export options to sync or update data in relevant business platforms.
Put data enrichment on autopilot with Nanonets. Try it for yourself.
B2B data enrichment techniques
In general, here are the six steps to enrich data:
1. Collecting data
Select the sources to combine data from. The next step is to set up data collection and merge the received data into one single location.
2. Data segmentation
Data segmentation enables you to separate or arrange a dataset following particular parameters. Utilizing statistical, regional, technological, or behavioral values is a prevalent segmentation method. The segmentation is then used to categorize and characterize the entity better. While if we talk about marketing use cases, segmenting is also used for targeting.
3. Derived attributes
Derived attributes are not part of the initial data set. However, these fields are built from a single domain or a group of areas. Since derived characteristics usually contain reasoning applied during analysis, they are helpful. To determine the age, the tactic subtracts the birthday from the current date, which is the derived property that is most considered.
4. Data imputation
Data imputation is the process of replacing values for missing information across fields. Instead of treating the missing number as zero, the estimated value examines your data. Calculating a lacking field's price based on other matters is a good example.
5. Named entity extraction
When using complex semi-organized or unstructured data, you can add many data values within a single field. Entity extraction allows you to identify different entities, such as people or businesses. The values should belong to one domain and then be blasted into one or more fields. This strategy will make your business data more meaningful.
5. Data categorization
Organize unstructured B2B data into predefined categories. This could involve classifying support tickets by urgency, categorizing leads by potential deal size, or sorting feedback based on sentiment — enabling more focused strategy development.
You can use either of these approaches to analyze unstructured data to make it more sensible.
- Sentiment analysis: The method of removing sentiments from text is known as sentiment analysis, such as analyzing whether consumer feedback is favorable, unfavorable, or neutral.
- Topication: The process of determining the "topic" of the text is topication. Such as identifying the genre of the article, whether it is about tech, sports, or travel.
How to navigate the challenges of B2B Data enrichment?
Here are some common challenges while enriching data and ways to overcome them:
- Inconsistent data structures
The way data is stored might differ when working with different data sources. Due to different schema or storing patterns, it becomes difficult to identify and merge them. The solution is to identify such differences and use no-code workflows to clean and convert data into a uniform structure.
- Data privacy concerns
With B2B data often containing sensitive information, adhering to data privacy regulations such as GDPR is critical during data extraction. Implement enrichment approaches that prioritize privacy and ensure compliance with all regulatory requirements.
- Inefficient integrations
Sometimes, there are differences in how data is stored in different software, which leads to incorrect entries. Ensure data integration across multiple systems follows proper naming conventions for better synchronization. A best practice is to employ middleware or data integration platforms that facilitate smooth data exchange and maintain the integrity of your enriched data across all systems.
- Data enrichment at scale
As your B2B business grows, so does the volume of data. It's essential to deploy an enrichment solution that scales with your needs, preventing bottlenecks and maintaining the timeliness of insights.
- Maintaining data quality
Inaccurate or obsolete data can undermine enrichment efforts. Establish ongoing data validation processes to keep your data accurate and actionable. Tools like Nanonets can automate this process, ensuring your data's integrity.
By proactively addressing these challenges, you can leverage B2B data enrichment to mitigate risks and maximize the value of your data assets, driving growth and competitive advantage.
If you have another use case in mind, please contact us. We can help you automate data extraction, processing, and archiving using no-code workflows at a fraction of the cost.
The best practices for B2B data enrichment
Data enrichment is the process of adding more information to existing data sets to make them more valuable. Sometimes, it needs to be done only once. In other cases, it must be done regularly, especially when new data is constantly added.
To ensure the data is high-quality and accurate, using the best methods and techniques for data enrichment is essential. These B2B data enrichment best practices will help improve the overall quality of the data and the insights it provides, which can ultimately benefit the business.
- Integrate quality data sources
- Connect your CRM with reputable B2B databases for instant access to enriched data.
- Identify and prioritize industry-specific data aggregators with high accuracy levels.
- Set up RSS feeds from industry-specific publications to automatically update market trends and competitor news in your system.
- Automate for efficiency
- Utilize Nanonets and Zapier to automate data collection from web forms directly into your CRM.
- Implement tools like Nanonets with real-time sync for quick data updates as new information becomes available.
- Implement a CRM plugin that automatically enriches new contacts with social media profiles and company information.
- Clean the data with tools
- Use tools to clean your datasets once, eliminating inconsistencies and duplicates.
- Schedule regular data cleaning sessions by setting up calendar alerts for your team.
- Empower your sales team
- Provide immediate access to enriched data by integrating it within your sales platform's dashboard.
- Create short, instructional videos on how sales teams can use enriched data for lead qualification and personalization.
- Monitor data in real-time
- Set up monitoring in data enrichment platforms to flag when key data points are outdated or missing.
- Use data monitoring tools to send alerts when significant industry changes occur that could affect your B2B relationships.
- Strive for accuracy
- Double-check data sources for credibility.
- Validate information with multiple references.
- Ensure completeness
- Cover all bases—fill in missing details using industry databases.
- Use a checklist to standardize the data points needed for each record.
- Maintain consistency
- Follow a uniform format for data entry.
- Use templates for standardizing manual data updates.
- Regular data reviews
- Schedule monthly data audits.
- Update records consistently to reflect changes like mergers or rebranding.
- Scalable processes
- Choose automation platforms that grow with your business, like Nanonets.
- Test enrichment processes with small datasets before full-scale implementation.
- Stable and replicable procedures
- Document the data enrichment steps as a guide for team members.
- Use software that can reproduce results, ensuring reliability.
- Indisputable evaluation criteria
- Define clear KPIs to measure success, such as improved lead conversion rates.
- Use before-and-after comparisons to demonstrate the impact of enrichment.
- Stay compliant
- Regularly review data against compliance checklists.
- Attend workshops or webinars to stay updated on data privacy regulations.
How do you choose the best data enrichment software for B2B success?
The right data enrichment software can be a game-changer for your B2B business. Here are a few practical tips to help you make an informed decision:
- Determine integration capabilities
- List the software systems currently in use, such as your CRM or ERP, and check whether the potential data enrichment tools integrate seamlessly with them.
- Look for tools that offer native integrations and API access to cover all possible integration needs.
- Assess data extraction features
- Evaluate the accuracy and reliability of data extraction. Perform a trial run with your datasets to see the tool's performance in real-world conditions.
- Ensure it can handle the specific data formats you process regularly, like PDFs, CSV files, or web pages.
- Consider data hosting needs
- Decide if you require a cloud-based solution for accessibility and scalability or an on-premise solution for control and security.
- Determine legal or regulatory requirements that may impact your choices, such as data residency laws like CCPA.
- Evaluate rule-based automation
- Look for software that allows you to create, test, and modify rules without extensive programming knowledge.
- Request a demo of how rules can be applied to your data workflows.
- Check data quality and legality
- Investigate how the software ensures the quality of the enriched data.
- Verify that the data provider complies with data protection regulations like GDPR or CCPA.
- Analyze pricing models
- Understand the pricing structure and what is included. Does the software charge per record, per user, or is there a flat monthly rate?
- Consider the long-term costs and how they align with your expected ROI from data enrichment.
- Explore middleware options
- If you have complex or unique needs, explore whether middleware solutions can offer flexibility.
- Evaluate how middleware can bridge gaps between your existing systems and the enrichment tool.
By following these points, you can confidently select a data enrichment software that meets your B2B company's current needs and supports your future growth and success.
Want to get started with data enrichment?
See how you can quickly implement your use cases with Nanonets.
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