March 18th, 2009

What the Experts Have to Say About Data

By Megan Murphy, Marketing Manager

If you’re in the any business backed by data then you realize that regardless how strong your sales team is or how much you spend on a top notch website you’re still only as good as the quality of information you represent.

I think my mother said it best, “garbage in, garbage out”.

One our our biggest struggles, being a provider of real estate information and solutions, is explaining what data even is and the opportunity cost of using  inacurate ’free’ data.   Over the past year various experts from our company ranging from Marc Siden, our CEO to Data Project Leads, Senior Relationship Managers to our CKO & CIO, Peter Goldey, one of the industries foremost experts on data collection, aggregation and integration have put together some pretty enlightening posts regarding what this data stuff is all about.

…in more technical terms than my mother of course (no offense momma

Chicken or the Egg: Information is Data or Data is Information?

The particular interesting evolution in data has been the advent of images being allowed to stand toe-to-toe with the more traditional quantifiable data (i.e., measurements). In the past images had been lucky to be classified merely as information, but does this mean that information is more important than data? Or had data changed, and in this digital age the fine line between data and information is blurred?

Data in Real Estate (Part 1): Creating Accessibility

Friday, July 25th, 2008 Posted in Informatics | Edit | 1 Comment »

The real estate industry has been affected by the nearly infinite amount of information available through the Internet in the same way that all industries have been. Consequently it is now more important than ever that the information clients receive …

Data in Real Estate (Part 2): Creating Quality

Friday, July 25th, 2008 Posted in Informatics | Edit | 1 Comment »

Having established a foundational knowledge of data and its application to the geographic sphere of real estate, the ability to determine what sort of data will be most valuable for a company’s business ventures is even more important. In the …

Measuring the Value of Information, Part 1 – The Content

Monday, July 21st, 2008 Posted in Geography and Mapping, Informatics | Edit | No Comments »

Whenever you spend money on anything you always should ask yourself a few questions, the first one being, “Is this worth the money?” I am sure many firms consider this and many other questions before making the decision to invest …

Tags: content, data, data comparison, data provider, free data, neighborhood data, quality data, real estate data.

October 23rd, 2008

‘FREE’ has its Price…Are you Compromising Quality to Cut Cost?

By Marc Siden, CEO

In rough times it’s easy to be lured by that seductive word…FREE.  We are captivated by it, mesmerized by it…

Fooled by it.

Everyday we’re offered something for free yet somehow it always ends up costing us more in the end.  It’s amazing that we’ve all been through this either in our personal lives or in business and yet we STILL fall for it.  It’s almost like every time that Publishers Clearing House letter comes, we still leave some room that we did actually win millions of dollars for doing nothing!

We, Onboard Informatics, have been very proactive lately in reaching out to our clients.  I want them to know that we realize that times are tough and that we are here to help and support during these times. We’ve even helped some of our clients consolidate projects and services, save money and create opportunity for both us and them.

Some of our best clients who are nervous about the market conditions and what’s to come, are looking to cut cost anywhere they can.  They have started to point out to us that some of the data sets we offer are out there for free.  Ah….. FREE, what a lovely word.

Let’s play a game of what ifs shall we.  What if Mercedes started putting used parts in their cars because it saved money? What if they replaced the wood panels with plastic and the leather seats with vinyl?  What if they cut out their exception service?  What if they did this for a year, and when the economy turned around, they went back to being the best at what they did?  Would we look at them the same?

We recently had an interesting run with some of our clients that had the unfortunate opportunity to experience the price of free data.  They thought they could cut some cost, which is great. Right?

Well, I guess it’s great to say you got something for free but what’s the opportunity cost here?  What are you losing when you gain ‘free’? What are you losing when you trust a source that that gets its information from free sources that don’t regularly update or QA their data?  What are you losing when you compromise quality to cut cost?

If you’re a broker you’re suppose to be an expert, you’re suppose to have the inside scoop and if your sources of information are as lousy as public information, you lose credibility, clients and eventually your business.  Even if you’re not a broker, like so many of our clients that are in the media industry that are considered to be credible sources, and you start posting false numbers your readers won’t be yours for long.

In less than a year these clients were back with us along with a number of their affiliates that are now new clients.  So, why did they com back? They were getting free data.

They realized that ‘FREE’ meant more money in their pockets that day but in the long run the price of timely quality information and service was far less than the price of ‘FREE’.

Do NOT to be short sighted and risk credibility or losing users in the wake of these economic circumstances.  You got here by controlling your own destiny, by setting high standards, don’t change to save money, please.

Tags: data, free data, Onboard Informatics, quality data.