Poor data quality 'could make customers unhappy'

Customers will assume that businesses have a high level of data quality and will be unhappy if this proves to be untrue, an expert asserts.

John Wilmes, chief technical architect for Progress Software's communications sector, tells DestinationCRM.com that the challenges this presents are intensified when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM).

He says that the data quality problem for these applications is due to the high volume, frequent variability and dynamism of the information these systems use.

Companies should subdivide these data quality into four areas, validity, completeness, consistency and correctness, he advises.

Mr Wilmes tells the news provider: "As the number, complexity, and interconnection of applications increases, enterprises are increasingly seeing data integration as a data quality opportunity, rather than just a technical problem to be solved as cheaply as possible."

A study by SAS has suggested that improving data quality can address risk management problems in the financial sector.