Irresistible Truths about Data Quality
If you search “Data Quality Horror stories” you will find them by the masses. It’s no secret poor data quality leads to poor quality information and bad visualization. Since data quality issues can arise from a multitude of sources, we find ourselves facing the unsettling truth that the quality of our data will at some point become “bad data”.
What Leads to Bad Data?
In short, it could be a variety of things. However, they fall into two major categories:
Simple Human Error and System Challenges.
Human Error is the most common of the two. In 2020, 31% of data quality issues within the Healthcare sector stemmed from basic human error. When employees mistype or mistakenly enter incorrect information, whether due to distraction or misunderstanding, it introduces inaccuracy into the system.
Additional, challenges arise when it comes to data governance/standardization. If you have standards, how do you enforce them? Employees failing to follow company guidelines regarding data entry, becomes a major player when leading to conformity or completeness problems. Now, throw in a pandemic and things become even more so “out of whack”. Since an abundance of companies have adopted a “work-from-home” culture, there is even more room for gaps when enforcing those standards.
Human error doesn’t necessarily stem from employees either. If you have customers, prospects or others outside of your organization, they too can generate a plethora of problems. Lead forms are a great example. When a potential customer misinterprets an intent field, they might enter their information slightly differently than the first time they filled out a lead form which then again, leads to inaccuracy.
How Does Poor Data Quality Impact Your Business?
According to Gartner, recent research has shown that organizations believe that poor data quality is responsible for an average of $15 million per year in losses. That is a drastic hit to business value.
Since it is unlikely that data quality concerns will decrease, even with data validation capabilities and machine learning- the world of big data will continue to expand, while the systems that support it will become more and more complex.
Don’t fail to get ahead of your data problems & allow your company to be overrun by them.