Tired of chasing data? Why your multi-vendor enrichment needs a platform to succeed

Imagine trying to build something complex, like a really epic Lego castle. You wouldn’t just slap pieces together randomly. You’d follow steps: build the base, then the walls, then the roof, and so on. Only when one step is totally done can you move to the next.

That step-by-step idea is the heart of the waterfall methodology, a rigorous way to manage projects that’s been around since the software world of the 1950s.

Sticking strictly to those old linear rules no longer works at today’s speed of business. But the simple elegance of the original idea, that concentration on solid planning and getting a broad understanding of business needs, still holds value.

So it’s not surprising that a smart engineer-turned-entrepreneur looked at this concept and thought, “Hey, this could solve a massive headache in marketing: data enrichment!” 

Today, that innovation—the multi-vendor enrichment (MVE) waterfall—is a cornerstone of the Openprise RevOps Data Automation (RDA) Cloud and, also not surprisingly, a capability that every data vendor in the industry is tripping over itself to copy.

The RevOps data quality challenge behind multi-vendor enrichment

You’re trying to enrich your accounts and contacts, but the data coming in from different vendors looks…different. One uses “United States”; another, “US.” Job functions and levels are all over the map. Company sizes are inconsistent. You also have valuable insights locked away in meeting notes or email threads (your first-party data) that would make your enrichment efforts smarter, but getting to it feels impossible.

This isn’t just a minor formatting issue; it’s a fundamental RevOps data quality problem. When your core data is inconsistent, incomplete, or inaccessible, even the best enrichment sources become difficult to integrate and leverage effectively.

Poor data quality negatively impacts GTM activities for a staggering 71% of companies. It creates misalignment between sales and marketing teams, who get sucked into debates over whose numbers are correct and end up paralyzed by indecision.

Trying to fix this manually or with piecemeal tools just adds complexity and cost. Today’s multifaceted GTM motions demand a level of quality and specificity that a single data vendor simply can’t provide. It’s clear that managing the input and integration of data from multiple sources is the real hurdle.

Why the multi-vendor enrichment (MVE) waterfall needs a foundation

The MVE waterfall methodology solves that problem by passing records through multiple data vendors to progressively enhance its quality, accuracy and completeness.. This approach can increase match rates by 30 to 40%.

But here’s the catch: selecting and managing multiple vendors is rarely easy or cost-efficient. The appeal of the waterfall is strong, but its success hinges on a robust foundation. Without one, you’re left struggling with more custom code, more manual processes, and more frustration as you deal with selecting, managing, and integrating data from multiple vendors.

This is where a powerful RevOps Data Automation platform comes in.

RevOps data automation: the platform for MVE

RDA platforms offer a simpler approach. The best share core capabilities that are essential for making MVE work seamlessly. These include:

• A shared agile data layer that unites data across teams and systems
• Data orchestration that automates data movement and transformation
• Data cleansing and identity resolution to improve the match rate
• Process automation to reduce manual tasks and accelerate RevOps
• Data engagement for self-service data access and interaction
• Measurement and instrumentation to track metrics and ROI
• Generative AI for RevOps to incorporate AI securely

With these capabilities automated on one platform, your MVE isn’t just applying vendor data; it’s enriching a clean, unified dataset from all your sources, consistently and automatically. A platform is the solid foundation your MVE waterfall needs to actually deliver on its promise.

How Openprise RDA Cloud turbocharges MVE

At Openprise, we see the challenges of MVE not just as technical hurdles, but as fundamental data quality problems that prevent GTM teams from operating effectively. RevOps Data Automation Cloud is purpose-built to enable and support the key features of our MVE solution.

These RDA Cloud capabilities enable MVE to thrive:

Multi-vendor waterfall

The core of multi-vendor enrichment is applying multiple data sources to improve the quality and completeness of your records. We partner with best-in-class data vendors and offer a mix of account, contact, global, technographic, and mobile data to choose from—all in one place, on a single contract. But that’s just the starting point.

Why the platform is essential: We actively curate a list of vendors that complement one another so you don’t have to manage different data vendors and their different formats, schemas, and fields. Openprise RDA Cloud data orchestration automatically cleans, standardizes, and validates all incoming data, whether in batch or real-time. And you can easily bring in data from any source—third-party, web, even your hard-to-get first-party data—and customize the enrichment for any purpose.

Automated acquisition

Generating new leads and expanding your total addressable market (TAM) sounds great, but it often turns into a frustrating exercise that wastes time and budget.

Why the platform is essential: With RDA Cloud, you can preview and evaluate millions of records, but only pay for what you keep.  Always-on acquisition automatically surfaces new data so you can selectively acquire only the contacts and accounts that meet your exact criteria. And because the platform includes built-in governance, it automatically handles suppression without the need to send a list to every vendor, reducing privacy and compliance risk while freeing up your sales and operations teams to focus on what they do best: generating revenue.

Targeted enrichment

Keeping your most valuable records like those in your ICP and/or buying groups up-to-date and complete is another important enrichment use case that most businesses put on the back burner because of the difficulty and expense involved.

Why the platform is essential: RDA Cloud compares your database to those of our vendors and highlights every field that can be enriched. With this record-by-record analysis, you can fill gaps and solve for any use case–missing mobile numbers, for example, or accounting firms in the northeast U.S.—and evaluate precisely where to focus your budget for a specific target. It’s a strategic and valuable way to spend the remaining quarter or yearly enrichment budget. More importantly, the RDA Cloud allows you to maintain data consistency across all your processes (regardless of the data source) and ensures you’ll always have the minimum number of fields enriched to support your ABX and other advanced GTM strategies and motions.

Account hierarchy

Dealing with account hierarchy data is another frustration for sales and typically means wading through row after row of spreadsheet records manually. It’s tedious, wasteful, and often prone to error.

Why the platform is essential: Dun & Bradstreet has the world’s best hierarchy data. The RDA Cloud lets you distill it into versions that align with your sales team and target accounts. Create multiple versions of D&B hierarchy data based on your specific needs, and keep your customizations in place through any data updates. You can also visualize your gaps and then buy missing data directly from D&B. Like other MVE jobs, you can preview the data before buying and only purchase what you need. And the best part? RDA Cloud keeps those records automatically updated.

Open data

Paying for data that you can actually get for free is a waste. This is a common problem with many enrichment vendors.

Why the platform is essential: The RDA Cloud agile shared data layer gives you access to its Open Data catalog. This includes valuable free public and government databases like the Department of Labor’s Form 5500 employee benefits data, Department of Education IPEDS higher-education data, and the NPPES healthcare provider registry. And because the platform has built-in data orchestration, it automatically cleans, normalizes, and validates this open data before it enters your system, ensuring it’s ready to use.

Data fracking

You’ve got valuable unstructured data hiding in your apps and online, but actually getting to it? That used to be a huge headache, often impossible or crazy expensive.

Why the platform is essential: Openprise RDA Cloud changes that with its built-in generative AI capabilities. Using customizable templates and bots, the platform lets you mine unstructured web and first-party data–what we call data fracking–from sources like Gong, Zoom, Slack, Gmail, and Calendar. It then gives this data structure, making it as easy to access and use as any third-party source for all your enrichment needs.

Identity resolution

Multi-channel is the new normal, which means users may now visit and interact with your website and digital properties across any number of devices and channels, making accurate identity resolution all the more difficult.

Why the platform is essential: The RDA Cloud is purpose-built for marketing and sales and includes hundreds of enrichment templates and custom workflows, or recipes, that were created and optimized for how real-world users interact with your properties. We can bring in data from any source and combine multiple technologies and methods—from IP address lookup and matching to email normalization—to rationalize user identities and associate them with their respective personas and organizations.

Beyond these powerful features, truly mastering MVE means controlling costs and proving value. That brings us to the transparency and measurement at the core of Openprise RDA Cloud.

A final word on ROI

Confusion over credits—and how they seem to rapidly disappear without warning or explanation—is a common frustration with enrichment vendors. That’s why the most important capability of Openprise MVE is measurement and instrumentation. Built-in metrics and tracking in RDA Cloud mean you get complete visibility and control over every dollar spent and how that investment is impacting your data quality and system performance.

Your ability to build pipelines and support the use of AI in your GTM motions requires a unifying solution to connect all your siloed data, from whatever source it comes and in whatever system it lives. Ready to see how a comprehensive platform can revolutionize your multi-vendor enrichment?

Download The buyer’s guide to RevOps data automation platforms and learn what to look for in a solution that will truly empower your GTM success.