Experian research reveals that forty per cent of UK businesses in danger of missing out on the multi-billion pound mobile-commerce boom
Experian QAS report shows that mobile data accuracy is low on the list of business priorities despite meteoric growth in m-commerce
London 20 June 2012 — Findings from an international survey released by Experian, the global information services company, today suggest that a significant proportion of UK businesses have yet to wake up to the potential of m-commerce and the importance of maintaining accurate mobile data. The survey clearly demonstrates a mobile malaise, with just eight per cent of organisations including mobile data in their wider data strategies.
The Experian QAS ‘Global Data Quality Research Report 2012’ examines attitudes to data within 900 organisations from a range of industry sectors in the UK, US and France. Responses from the 300 UK organisations surveyed make it clear that companies are failing to adopt a mobile data strategy to help manage data quality, and are reacting slowly to the emergence of smartphones and the opportunity within the mobile channel as a competitive differentiator.
Despite predictions that smartphone penetration will hit 100 per cent in the UK by 2015* and recent research from Experian in the US suggesting that a half of all smartphone owners use their device to access the web, this survey reveals that 40 per cent of UK companies, and only 38 per cent in the US, currently fail to collect any mobile data at all.
Joel Curry, Managing Director, Experian QAS said, “Our research suggests that too many UK organisations are suffering from a mobile malaise and are in danger of missing out on a channel that has the potential to be worth many millions of pounds and that, as such, could present real opportunities for businesses. With industry figures** predicting that the market will grow by an average of 42 per cent each year and be worth £2.5 billion by 2016 in the UK alone, these organisations are going to be ill-prepared to benefit from the m-commerce boom. These organisations risk being left behind if they don’t wise up to the advantages of adopting a mobile data strategy now.”
The 60 per cent of UK organisations that do collect mobile data take a varied approach to ensuring its accuracy. Just 27 per cent of these organisations regularly check their mobile data — a number lagging well behind the US where more than a third of organisations validate their data regularly. And, of those companies that do validate, only 30 per cent do so at point of capture. This leaves a significant number wide open to increased costs associated with manual intervention and ineffective marketing, and could lead to poorly perceived customer service and brand image.
Yet, at the vanguard of mobile marketing is the 11 per cent of organisations that believe mobile phone contact will be a priority — unsurprisingly, this is higher in the retail sector (14 per cent), but the charity and not-for-profit sector falls behind at just six per cent. However, data accuracy still plagues these early adopters. For example, globally, of those organisations that view mobile phone data as the most important marketing and customer communications channel in 2012,
· 49 per cent do not currently collect any mobile phone data;
· of the 51 per cent that do, less than half (48 per cent) validate this data at the point of data capture; and
· just 38 per cent say it is checked on a regular basis for accuracy.
Joel Curry continued, “Today, organisations will go to great lengths to validate an email or postal address using the latest technologies, yet many of these same companies will completely ignore a mobile number despite the fact that solutions exist for authentication. With more and more potential customers consuming information and shopping through their smartphones, this could prove to be a very costly mistake for businesses facing some of the toughest competition yet in today’s economic environment.”
*Source:http://www.mobilesquared.co.uk/news/Smartphones+to+cover+entire+population+by+2015_105
** Source: https://www.paypal-press.co.uk/Latest-News/No-Wallet-Required-The-British-High-Street-in-2016-fe.aspx