Whether you run a school, college or any type of educational institution, you may have to deal with a huge volume of student data, admission records, staff details and more. To ensure excellent school administration, you need good quality, reliable data in your database. Data cleansing is an effective process to keep all the data clean and well managed. Also referred to as data cleaning or data scrubbing, data cleansing is important in editing or removing any incorrect, incomplete, poorly formatted or duplicate data in a database and thus keeping all details updated. Managing the process manually can consume a considerable amount of your staff’s time and so data cleansing outsourcing is a smart move to make.
Professional data cleansing services provided by expert sources include
- correction of addresses/contact information
- duplicate content removal
- upper / lower case names conversion
- conversion of formats
- merging of data sets
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Data cleansing usually involves cleaning data from a single database, such as a workplace spreadsheet and the process depends on the type of data.
Consider these key data cleansing tips:
- Organize and Assess the DataThe first step is to organize the data into a database or spreadsheet, as it helps to easily assess the volume of data you have, how to index content easily and know what may or may not need updating. Once the records are organized, review the data and check for any duplicate entries, spelling errors, incomplete records, or wrongly inserted numbers.
- Clean the DataOnce you’ve assessed the corrections to be made, it would be easier to make those changes now. An ideal option is to make a copy of the data and make your corrections here, as this helps to maintain original data, protect that information and keep it free from any mistakes that may happen. When the corrected data is edited or proof-read and is mistake-free, consider copying the changes to the original file.Consider using advanced tools that some student information systems feature to assess and clean your student data. Such tools can not only simplify the correction process, but also easily delete or modify information across all linked records.
- Use Excel FunctionsMicrosoft Excel comes with diverse features and functions that most of us are not aware of. As manual data cleaning consumes time and is strenuous, use MS Excel functions when using spreadsheet, to scrub or clean your data. “Remove duplicates” is one among the key Excel functions that works for text-based columns to get rid of all copies. To access this function,First, choose the cells you want to check for duplicates and choose Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values in Home.
Now, choose the formatting you want to apply to the duplicate values in the box next to “values with” and then click OK.
- Take Professional SupportConsider partnering with an experienced data cleansing company. Make sure the company’s services can help you obtain accurate and relevant records, ensure better sharing of information across departments, and maintain the standard industry database file formats. They must be able to enhance your data integrity and meet your turnaround time requirements at the same time.
Need accurate, error-free student data? Don’t worry about dummy values, cryptic data or even data integration concerns. At MOS, we provide reliable data cleansing services for all businesses including the education sector.
Contact us at 1-800-670-2809!
- Use Data Cleansing Software Advanced data cleansing tools such as Xplenty, DemandTools, Winpure, and WinPure Clean & Match can save your time for core business and help you with a good cleanup process. However, to clean up the huge volume of data, we recommend outsourcing the task to a professional firm, as they provide the services of skilled resources at a competitive rate.
In our next blog, we’ll discuss some important data cleansing tools.
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