Time to rethink how much customer data you store

Does the company you work for (or own) retain data on customers? Odds are pretty high that it does, at least in some form (often fairly extensively). It’s often attractive to do so for both marketing and functionality purposes.

But here’s the thing, storing that data is probably a bad business decision. One that could cost your business a huge amount of money and, even worse, potential loss of trust by your most valuable customers.

Storage costs 

Just from the IT infrastructure point of view: As your business grows and the amount of data you store on each customer slowly expands (it always does), your cost for storing that data also grows. Rather quickly. Even if your data center is already well equipped, this is a not-insignificant recurring expense (failing drives, energy costs, other equipment needs, etc.).

Not only do you need servers and storage systems for that data, but you need SysAdmins, database admins, and (potentially) programmers to organize the data and keep it safe. The payroll needs alone often quickly outpace the real value of storing extended data on your customers.