Computer-based databases offer you a powerful tool for marketing more of your products and services to your existing customers, and speeding up business processes. This guide covers the benefits of a good database, how to set up a database, how you can learn more about your customers from a database so that you can find more customers like them, and how to generate more sales from a database.
This guide aims to show you why a good database is a valuable asset for your business. It concentrates on customer databases because these are most immediately beneficial for most businesses, but other databases (such as inventory or supplier databases) can also improve your business management significantly.
What is a database?
In simple terms, a database is a collection of information. All businesses already have databases of one kind or another. The business cards you have collected in your drawer or cardholder, your address book, or the Rolodex on your desk are essentially simple databases.
The more organised this information is, the more use it is to you. Entering details into a database software program allows you to harness the power of a computer; to sort and use the information efficiently to improve the running of your business and generate more sales.
For instance, generating invoices automatically from a database without having to retype all the details improves management efficiency, while mail merging direct marketing letters with a database improves your marketing efficiency.
Elements of a computer database
Each element of information in a database is entered into a separate Field. For example, in the case of customers the separate fields might be: First name, Last name, Street address, Suburb, City, Telephone, Fax, and Email.
Keeping fields separate allows you to sort information quickly (for instance, sorting Last names alphabetically). When you’ve filled in these fields for each customer, you’ve completed a Record of that customer’s details.
A collection of records is known as a Table. You might want to keep different tables for different information. For example, you might want to keep records of all your suppliers in a separate table from your customers table.
A table, or a compilation of tables, makes up the Database. You can instruct the database to extract certain information from a table. For instance, you might want to know whether most of your clients come from the North Island or the South Island. A database capable of relating and extracting information from several tables at the same time is known as a relational database. Simpler databases that can work with only one table at a time are called flat file databases. Most modern database programs are relational.