Too little weight is being placed on data quality management within organisations, concluded speakers at the BI Practice executive breakfast, held in Johannesburg yesterday.
"Companies do not see data quality as important enough to be taken to board level," said Ahmed Chohan, head of data management practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).
"According to a PWC data management survey, only two in five companies surveyed are certain their data management strategy has board approval."
The survey also showed 45% of companies assess the quality of data, a figure Chohan believes to be far too low.
Getting it wrong
According to Chohan, businesses are incorrectly going about their data quality solution in strategy, approach, process and sustaining the solution.
"Companies are taking reactive approaches instead of proactive ones," he explained.
The impact of poor data quality can include loss of share value or revenue, poor decision-making, compromising the company`s reputation and fraud, said Chohan.
He also believes data quality should be linked to key performance indicators. "Incentives should be linked to the level of data accuracy to drive supportive behaviour for data quality.
"After all, data is the lifeblood of any business."
"In order to have sustainable data quality, it is important that correct management processes be put in place," agreed Mark Dunleavy, financial services manager at Informatica Data Quality UK.
Dunleavy identified the six most important data quality issues as completeness, conformity, consistency, accuracy, duplication and integrity.
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