Major decisions based on inaccurate data
Many major companies are routinely making major commercial decisions based on 'remarkably inaccurate' data, industry watchers have warned.
Link: Effective decision-making
According to analyst Gartner, more than a quarter of critical data within Fortune 1,000 businesses will continue to be inaccurate or incomplete through to 2007.
‘Most enterprises don’t fathom the magnitude of the impact that data quality problems can have,’ said Ted Friedman, principal analyst for Gartner, in a statement.
‘These problems cause wasted labour and lost productivity that directly affect profitability,’ he added.
The analyst firm said data quality problems are responsible for the failure of many costly business intelligence and customer relationship management (CRM) projects. These programmes fail, in large part, because the poor quality of underlying data is not recognised or addressed.
Many enterprises simply look to technology they can buy to resolve data quality problems without first focusing on people and business processes, Friedman warned: ‘Throwing technology at data quality issues usually doesn’t solve the problem and won’t yield positive long-term results,# he said.
Friedman advised enterprises to examine organisational approaches and methodologies to improve data quality: ‘If the IT group is the only organisation that actively works and focuses on the issue, the business’s ability to achieve data quality goals will be severely limited,’ Friedman said.
‘The greatest success in managing data quality comes from engaging both business users and the IT organisation.’