Data quality can lead to business intelligence

One of the chief motivations for corporations to collect data is the hope that they will be able to derive some insight from it for the future. Yet sometimes, businesses spend too much time working to integrate their various data sources and improve access, and not enough time worrying about the actual quality of that information.

In an interview with Search Data Management, Claudia Imhoff - president of the Intelligent Solutions consultancy - said that companies should make data quality a top concern at all times, not just when they are trying to merge information silos and achieve business intelligence. 

"Errors are happening everywhere else along the way, so you need to figure out where they are coming from," she told the news outlet.

Not only does data quality affect the success of a business intelligence initiative, it also plays into other aspects of the enterprise - including sales, marketing and customer service. James Kobielus, a former Forrester Research analyst, told Search Data Management that it's not as simple as compiling all the information into a single database. If an organization does that, it may have multiple records on a single person with no idea of how to find the right one. In that situation, deduplication software may help the business create one complete, accurate and up-to-date file.