The Difference Between Point-In-Time Data and Live Data

Point-in-time data is static. Live data is up-to-date. Which type of data is fueling your business?

What is Point-In-Time Data?

Point-in-time data is what legacy data vendors provide. It’s a snapshot of a business’ past, meaning the information is often out of date when it’s received. 

This issue stems from how data is collected — by using call centers instead of indexing websites and using A.I. to keep data up to date.

Point-In-Time Data Versus Live Data

Modern data vendors provide their customers with live data. Live data is continuously updated to ensure you get the most accurate account and contact information to grow your business. 

Conversely, point-in-time data leaves sales and marketing professionals with inaccurate data, causing issues with go-to-market strategies and individual prospect outreach. 

Let’s look at some examples.

A marketing team’s go-to-market (GTM) strategy requires new customer data that goes beyond the usual firmographics and demographics.

GTM teams need deeper insights to identify department structures (e.g., org charts, roles and responsibilities, and numbers of employees).  

Point-in-time data might provide company size and revenue information.

However, for a GTM strategy, the static data won’t reflect recent changes such as mergers and acquisitions or c-suite shuffles. 

On the sales side, live data provide sales teams with prospecting insights for nurturing and converting qualified leads. As fresh data feeds into the CRM, reps can prospect with greater accuracy. 

That includes identifying decision-makers and personalizing cold calls with up-to-date company and industry data. 

Here’s Matt Amundson’s quick take on the difference between point-in-time data and live data (see also the transcript below).

https://youtu.be/8K4mua_9I5s

Point-In-Time Data Video Transcript

“Hey everybody, Matt Amundson here with another Modern Data Tip. So today, we’re going to talk about point-in-time data versus live data.

So point-in-time data is essentially a snapshot of a business. It’ll tell you, at one point, a company had X amount of revenue and this many employees, but you don’t know when that data was collected.

Versus a modern data provider, which will give you live data. This data is constantly refreshed, and it’s updated as that business grows.

Now, why is this important?

If you’re a sales or marketing professional and you’re operating off old data, you might not be able to be successful in a sales cycle, or as a marketer, you might not be segmenting your database properly.

So make sure when you’re buying data, you’re buying data that’s alive.”

Point-In-Time Data is Static — Your Business Is Not

Unlike point-in-time data, live data ensures marketing and sales professionals have the most up to date information, leading to higher engagement and more closed-won deals. 

Whether you’re updating your GTM strategy or expanding your sales teams, your business needs accurate, live data to grow.