Data Integrity 101: Understanding the Differences Between Verification and Validation
Are you struggling to ensure the accuracy and consistency of your organization’s data? You’re not alone. Data integrity is a crucial aspect of any organization, yet it can be challenging to maintain. Two critical processes in data integrity are data verification and validation, but do you know the difference? Don’t worry. You’re about to find out.
This informative blog post will dive deep into understanding the subtle yet important differences between data verification and validation. We will also reveal key best practices to keep your data integrity intact. Trust us; you won’t want to miss this!
Definition of Data Integrity & Its Importance
Data integrity means that your data is accurate and reliable. It ensures that your data is complete and can be trusted for its intended use. With data integrity, your organization’s data can become trustworthy, leading to better decisions and efficiency.
In today’s digital world, data is essential to any organization. It is the backbone of all business operations, decision-making, and reporting. Data integrity is critical to ensure that all information is accurate, complete, and consistent, so maintaining data integrity should be a top priority for all organizations.
Understanding the Differences Between Data Verification and Data Validation
Data verification and data validation are two important processes that organizations use to maintain data integrity. Both processes are used to ensure the accuracy and integrity of data, but they serve slightly different purposes.
Let’s break down data verification first. Data verification is the process of confirming that data is accurate and complete. It typically involves comparing the data to a source document or cross-checking it with another system.
Data verification aims to ensure that the data entered into a system is accurate and complete and matches the source information.
For example, if a customer service representative enters a customer’s address into a database, the representative would verify the address by comparing it to the address on the customer’s driver’s license or another form of identification, such as a passport.
On the other hand, data validation ensures that data conforms to specific rules or constraints. This includes checking that data falls within a particular range, is of the correct data type, or conforms to other specific requirements.
For example, data validation can include checks to ensure that a phone number is in the correct format for a specific country or that an email address consists of the @ symbol.
The goal of data validation is to ensure that data meets a particular set of criteria and is fit for the intended use. Processors can mark data as invalid once it does not conform to the specific requirement set forth by the processor.
In a nutshell, data verification is all about making sure the information entered is correct and complete, whereas data validation is the process of ensuring the data follows specific rules or guidelines. Data verification will tell you what’s missing, and data validation will let you know if there is an error.
Implementing Data Quality Controls for Maintaining Data Integrity
To maintain data integrity, organizations must implement data quality controls to ensure that data is accurate, complete, and reliable.
There are two types of data quality controls: preventive controls and detective controls. Preventive controls help prevent data integrity problems from occurring, while detective controls are implemented to correct data integrity problems after they have occurred.
Examples of Preventive Controls:
- Data Validation
- Data Verification
- Business Rules Check
As for detective controls, data enrichment can be a solution for data integrity. This process usually happens after validation and verification—when processors have marked data as incorrect or invalid. Instead of removing data from your system, data enrichment can help you find the missing or correct information you need.
Searchbug’s Data Integrity Solutions
Searchbug has four data integrity tools that can help businesses spot errors, add missing information, tag the status of contact data for business compliance purposes, such as the DNC, and provide more insights about customer data.
These data integrity solutions that act as data cleansing, enrichment, and verification tools are bulk email verifier, phone validator, contact data append, and API.
Bulk Email Verifier
Searchbug’s bulk email verification tool can check many email addresses in one go and figure out which ones are valid, invalid, temporary, harmful, and which can accept all emails.
This will prevent bounced emails and increase the chances of your emails being delivered. It also finds email addresses frequently marked as spam and prevents you from being labeled as a spam sender.
Additionally, it can also find and identify fake email addresses, known as Spam trap email addresses.
Bulk Phone Validator
Are you trying to determine if your list’s phone numbers are landlines, cellphones, or internet-based numbers?
A phone validator can quickly and easily tell you the type of number it is, the phone company it belongs to, and its location. It can also tell if the number is currently in service or disconnected. This service works for phone numbers in the USA, as well as Canada.
Aside from that, it also provides details about other important information, such as the DNC listing. Searchbug’s phone validator helps businesses identify phone numbers under the Do-not-call list, which allows them to comply with the rules set forth by the TCPA.
Phone validator has helped businesses save money from potential fines and protect brand reputation from legal complaints.
Contact Data Append
This self-service data append tool is designed to make it simple and fast to update your database records. If the validation and verification process flagged a few pieces of invalid data, you can now append your contact list to fix the errors.
Whether looking for current names, addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses, this tool can help you find the information you need. Its user-friendly interface allows you to append data to your existing records without technical knowledge easily.
APIs
Our APIs allow you to check and validate data in real time and find contact information such as email, phone numbers, and addresses.
This means that you can quickly and easily update your database and feel confident that the information is accurate. The tool can also be integrated directly into your website, application, or mobile app, so you don’t have to worry about compatibility issues.
Additionally, this tool helps organizations comply with regulations and other requirements by keeping the data accurate and up-to-date.
Best Practices for Achieving and Maintaining Data Integrity
Ensuring the accuracy and consistency of your data is essential for making informed business decisions, improving communication and customer service, and reducing costs associated with undeliverable emails and incorrect phone numbers.
To achieve and maintain data integrity, organizations need to implement best practices such as:
- Perform data validation and verification regularly to ensure that they are working effectively.
- Establish clear roles and responsibilities for data quality management.
- Ensure that data entry processes are accurate and efficient. This can be achieved through automated data entry systems or integrating APIs.
- Keep data updated and accurate through regular data cleansing.
- Perform necessary data enhancement as regularly as needed.
- Continuously monitor and test data backups to ensure they are available when needed.
Conclusion
That’s it! We hope you learned the difference between data verification and data validation. These two sound the same but play different roles in maintaining data integrity.
Getting access to data processors or APIs are a few things that businesses should be prioritizing this year. These tools will help your organization improve productivity, create marketing campaigns strategically, promote healthy customer relations, and increase sales and efficiency.
If you need the data services mentioned above, contact our team today and we’d be happy to provide custom solutions that fit your business.
