Not everyone knows this, but sourdough bread is not easy to make. That crisp and tangy bread, which works so perfectly for a rustic eggs benedict, has one problem. The key ingredient: the sourdough starter culture. This is basically a living organism of yeast and bacteria that if left unmanaged will wither and die. At this point the culture must be discarded and a fresh one started. A process that takes weeks. Not a position you want to be in if you’re a baker!
We are lucky now, with the advent of refrigerators bakers can at least slow down the process. Only a few decades ago if a baker were to go on holiday, he would take his wife, his children, and his sourdough culture. And believe me, all three were equally valuable to him. The trick to keeping a sourdough culture is quite simple – you simply need to feed it with flour and keep it at a manageable size by culling it. But if you miss a feeding, you may starve the culture.
For those of us who can’t even keep a houseplant alive, this would certainly pose a challenge! But the artisanal bakers of Europe have been doing this for decades. In fact we heard some sourdough cultures are decades old, older than some of our staff…
So what does all of this have to do with data? Well, data is in a similar position. Although we’ve never had the need to take it with us on holiday! At whoiswhere we’ve spent more than a decade lovingly crafting our database and feeding it with fresh data. It has grown from a small list of 3,000 to a whopping 200,000 records of NZ businesses. We understand this is the largest list of NZ businesses in NZ, and the world. It wasn’t an easy journey, with many uphill battles along the way. But we soldiered on to our position today.
However quantity is nothing without quality. For data this means accuracy. And we prize ourselves on the accuracy of our data above all else. Like the baker, we ensure it by constantly feeding our database with fresh information every single week. Some lists are verified 5 times a year in our quest for accuracy. And on average all data is verified 3 times per year. That’s every 4 months or 16 weeks or 121 days.
A casual bystander may ask the simple question “Why?” We could say because data changes at a rate of 0.5-1.5% every week. Or we could say because we want to be the best we can be.
But the true reason we do it, the real reason we do the work that we do, is for our customers. These people entrust us to provide data that they can rely on for their marketing activities. And being a marketing company ourselves, we understand how important it is for these businesses to have quality data. This is why you won’t find business data that is better than ours.
At this point you may be asking yourself, “So what do I do now?” Now, we invite you to give us a ring on 04 977 7877 and we are happy to discuss how our data can be used to improve the marketing efforts of your business. If you’re still unsure you can read about some of the ways different industries use our data on the next page. You are welcome to take a look at our website www.whoiswhere.co.nz for more information about our other services. And finally you must remember the next time you do marketing – think data, think whoiswhere.
