Use data quality to seize new opportunities

If companies haven't already made investments in big data, there is a strong chance they will in the future. New analytics strategies are helping decision makers turn the content stored in their customer relationship management systems into actionable insights to achieve greater business success. 

There is plenty of data to go around, given that IBM estimates 2.5 quintillion bytes are generated every day. That number has grown exponentially as the internet age developed. In fact, around 90 percent of the data that exists today was created in the past two years due to a growing pile of content that includes text from social media updates, blog posts and oil rig readings.

Companies that can successfully harness these vast stores are hoping to improve their marketing efforts, reduce risks and predict future trends. However, they put those goals in jeopardy if they do not take responsibility for their data quality. 

In a recent post for Computing.co.uk, contributor John Leonard writes that CIOs often deal with the blame game when it comes to ensuring their databases are error?-free. Leonard gives a scenario in which a company's CIO turns to the sales director to ask for help cleaning the firm's data, only to be informed that issues are being introduced by people in the accounts department. Then, the CIO asks the accounts manager, who passes the baton to the finance director and subsequently mistakes are attributed to the deliveries department. 

To avoid finger-pointing, CIOs can establish data governance policies and uphold them with address management programs and other quality measures to ensure that the information coming in is spotless and complete.