Why Organizations Struggle With Data Quality

A significant amount of data within organizations is inaccurate, and many executives admit that they frequently can't fix data quality issues before they negatively impact business, according to a recent survey from Experian Data Quality. One problem: Most companies haven't yet adopted a platform approach to profiling, monitoring and visualizing data. Nor do they track data quality as part of their standard operations. And few have put in place centralized and standardized data management practices, allowing individual departments to come up with their own strategies. As a result, companies fall short of expectations in developing data-driven, actionable insights. "Most organizations are at lower levels of data quality sophistication at this stage," according to the report, titled "Create Your Ideal Data Quality Strategy." "But as investment continues and the chief data officer continues to become more popular, organizations will inevitably advance their strategies into more central functions. The people, processes and technology around data need to operate in a more coordinated fashion to ensure consistency and usability across the business." More than 1,200 global C-level execs, vice presidents, directors, managers and administrative staff took part in the research, which was conducted by Dynamic Markets.