Why Managers Lack Confidence in Their Firm's Data

Nearly all managers lack complete confidence in their company's data, according to a recent survey from Experian Data Quality. The accompanying report, "Building a Business Case for Data Quality," indicates that, despite the trust issues, it often takes many months for companies to approve data quality initiatives. Meanwhile, IT managers overseeing these efforts struggle to deal with large data volumes, human error and a lack of data standardization. Complicating matters is the fact that most organizations haven't assigned centralized data quality roles or data quality sponsors to address these issues. To effectively respond to the challenges, tech leaders and other senior executives must make a strong case for data quality initiatives—a case that will hopefully help their company overcome challenges such as a lack of both funding and qualified data quality personnel. "Implementing a successful data quality program is imperative to your organization's future," according to the report. "But building a business case for data quality is often a lot harder than it seems. Given the amount of anecdotal evidence that circulates in organizations, generating quantifiable proof of a business impact can often prove quite difficult. Yet, if you are able to successfully tie the results of your data quality program back to your business' strategic objectives, you can unequivocally articulate its value to your business leaders and win their support." More than 400 global management-level professionals took part in the research.