"Why nobody has data quality issues yet everybody seems to suffer"

Introduction

Data quality is like an iceberg. It’s an egregious, albeit largely hidden issue. The Data Warehousing Institute estimated in 2006 that poorquality customer data costs US businesses a staggering $611 Billion a year in postage, printing, and staff overhead. Yet we observe another fascinating phenomenon: no executives ever seem to have these problems! They all must assume their competitors have such problems, because they don’t. Why is that?

Joe from corporate headquarters is well respected throughout the
business, but feared is an adjective that also comes to mind. He
compiles the reporting for board meetings each month. Everybody
knows Joe needs his input on time so he can assemble and sanitize the numbers. When the board comes back with questions he chases
people up.

Many companies have their “Joe.” How else could they get consistent and timely reporting to the board? And because nothing ever seems “wrong” about reports that executives get, they never knew there was an issue with data quality. Much less will they know how much time and effort was spent “straightening out” numbers to produce these
reports.

Download full article