Monthly Archives: May 2013

There's no doubt that when compiling massive clusters of data to analyze in an effort to gain greater wisdom about their industries, companies must emphasize accuracy. There's no substitute for superior data quality - if corporations use address management tools to ensure that their information is updated and verified, they can proceed with confidence toward decisions based on solid business intelligence.

With some varieties of social data, there's a big problem to look out for - data can be fleeting, and companies have no way of retaining control of it.

Information Week raises a question in response to the data quality movement. Has all the emphasis on accuracy gone too far? Is it possible that data quality has become overrated?

Jim Harris of the OCDQ Blog writes that in addition to data scientists who are able to quickly process and find trends in information, it’s also important to have data “philosophers,” critical thinkers who are able to find true meaning in big data, finding lessons that companies can really act upon.

By gathering information on individuals and using software tools to verify its accuracy, firms of all kinds can glean valuable insights from big data. But perhaps nowhere is data quality more applicable than in healthcare, where it has the potential to save lives.

Data quality isn’t the only concern. According to Information Management, there’s another equally important value for companies to consider when working with large volumes of information: data velocity.

Mining data on individuals can have a profound effect for companies in all sectors. Whether in retail, marketing, finance or any one of countless other industries, it can be enormously beneficial to compile information on potential customers and use it to find optimized business solutions.

Compiling accurate data on consumers is a valuable pursuit that will help marketers improve their sales numbers, both immediately and in the years ahead. The effects of data quality are far-reaching.

By collecting data on consumers and performing due diligence to verify its accuracy, companies across all sectors can find meaningful statistical trends to help them predict future activity. Perhaps the most notable area where data quality can make a difference is finance, where banks can collect information from social media and use it to find valuable insights about how people allocate their money.

Data quality is an important driving force behind marketers’ technology use. If they aren’t able to use address management solutions to ensure that consumers’ mailing addresses, emails and phone numbers are recorded accurately, then they won’t be able to effectively measure the efficacy of their promotional efforts. They also won’t be able to prevent fraud.