Managing company finances via accounting and bookkeeping is something that every organisation takes for granted, as these practices have been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Performing a regular audit of the process is now a regulatory requirement. However, there is another valuable asset that requires monitoring and managing with the same care and rigour as our finances, even if it does not appear on the balance sheet, and that is our corporate data.
MEDpages, a Cape Town-based healthcare data management company, is one of the companies using a data audit service. Roxane Adinarayan, Business Development Manager at MEDpages, explains how the data audit service works:
“Our core business function is all about providing accurate and complete data to the healthcare industry, and therefore we continuously strive to ensure that we maintain the highest data quality standards. Rather than purchase special data quality software, and 're-invent the wheel' by developing our own in-house solution, we decided to use the data auditing service provided by InfoBlueprint.
“Here's how it works: We agree with InfoBlueprint in advance on what data quality tests are to be performed on our data, and provide our data for auditing every two months. Within 48 hours we receive a data quality audit report for each data entity analysed, which includes statistics on missing or duplicate data and data that does not conform to the agreed business rules.
“The reports are very easy to read and help us in investigating and correcting any data quality issues found. Additionally, we get a trend report that shows how the quality of each data entity is changing over time, and helps us to identify any new issues with the data much sooner than would otherwise be the case. The data quality audit also allows us to objectively measure how effective our data quality monitoring and improvement activity is.
“Without this external data quality audit, we would be unable to quantify our data quality objectively, and would not be able react so quickly to any changes in it.”
The data auditing service is provided by InfoBlueprint, and Alan Snow, Director of InfoBlueprint explains why this service is proving popular: “We specialise in helping clients to resolve their data management problems, so it was a logical step for us to develop the data auditing service for clients who first want to see how good or bad their data quality is, before taking any further steps.
“This service provides an external, objective, quantification of data quality across a number of important aspects, and also enables companies to track where the quality is getting better and where it is getting worse.
“For many companies, it represents the first logical step on the road to data governance, for others it is a confirmation that their efforts in data management are taking them in the right direction. Either way, it is an non-intrusive and inexpensive way to measure data quality and business rules.”
The data quality audit is performed with the assistance of software specially developed for this purpose, and streamlined by InfoBlueprint, so that a 48-hour turn-around can then be guaranteed. The costs are related to the volume of data audited, which means that each client pays a fair price for the value obtained from the service.
Through the reports, the client can observe data quality trends, identify exactly which records have failed which tests, and initiate any investigative or corrective actions accordingly. Optional assistance is available to clients who require it, from advice on how to improve data quality to providing specialists to work alongside customer staff on data improvement projects.
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