{"id":982,"date":"2019-06-26T08:30:41","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T15:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/?p=982"},"modified":"2019-07-03T19:21:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T02:21:03","slug":"how-much-does-poor-data-quality-cost-your-organization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/how-much-does-poor-data-quality-cost-your-organization\/","title":{"rendered":"How much does poor data quality cost your organization?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 6 weeks of my course, Data Quality Improvement at BCIT<\/a>, I try to impart to them an understanding of how to \u2018discover\u2019 the instances of poor data quality in the data sets they are responsible for so that they can begin to help their team to ‘monetize’ the effects of that poor data quality. Each organization is different and so there are no \u2018out of the box’ solutions that will fit everyone, so I try to show my students how they can use some specific tools and techniques to support the cost benefit analyses behind enabling continuous improvement in data quality.<\/p>\n

Joseph Juran, a pioneer of quality who defined quality as fitness for use and something that satisfies customer needs, said that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the USA, about a third of what we do consists of redoing work previously ‘done’.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"joseph<\/p>\n

Juran\u2019s stark ‘one third’ statistic came from his understanding of the inefficiencies built into the average organization\u2019s business processes, and to a large extent many of those inefficiencies can be reduced by use of process improvement methods such as Theory Of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma. Those same techniques, initially developed for manufacturers for improving business processes, should also be considered for the improving the \u2018manufacture of data\u2019 in today\u2019s organizations. If you think about it, most organizations are not so much focused on the manufacture of widgets \u2013 rather they are focused on the management of the decisions based the data produced by their business processes.<\/p>\n

\"information<\/a>Juran\u2019s ‘one third’ statistic is congruent with the chapter on the costs of poor data quality in Larry English\u2019s \u201cInformation Quality Applied<\/a>\u201d, where English details the statistical analyses illustrating that the costs of poor data quality are between 20% and 35% of the operating revenue of the average organization.<\/p>\n

If the data produced by an organization\u2019s business processes does not support their decision making, then their decisions will be sub-optimal. However, if the data can be cajoled into supporting the critical decisions but always has to first be cleaned up, massaged and filtered before it is \u2018safe for decision making\u2019, then the organization is forced into an inefficient \u2018data gathering and cleansing\u2019 cycle that could actually be building into a dangerous time lag between when the time the decisions should be made, and when the data required to make those decisions is finally clean enough to support the key decisions.<\/p>\n

\n

Here’s how you can\u00a0estimate the cost of poor data quality in 5 simple steps<\/a>.<\/em><\/h3>\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

IBM puts the cost of poor data quality in the USA at $3.1 Trillion dollars per year, which is roughly 15% of the USA GDP of $20 Trillion. To paraphrase Everett Dirksen “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you\u2019re talking about real money.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"IBM<\/p>\n

\"Data<\/a>So, it looks like the ‘ball park’ guesstimate for how much poor data quality is costing your company is between 15% and 35% of operating revenue<\/strong>, if your company is in the average range. Does that seem like a reasonable amount of money to waste? Is it reasonable to waste any money due to poor data quality? Jack Olson, in his book \u201cData Quality: The Accuracy Dimension<\/a>\u201d, says that roughly half of the costs due to poor data quality can be recovered or mitigated. The other half is irrecoverable due to the continuous evolution of data sets, interfaces and technologies at a local and industrial level. Olson\u2019s book is the only one Ralph Kimball has reviewed on Amazon, and after giving it a 5 out of 5, Kimball says “This book is on my very short list of essential reading for data warehouse professionals.”<\/em><\/p>\n

So, without sounding facetious, can I ask a simple question? If you have not been keeping metrics on the quality of data in your organization, should you consider publishing a note to advise the stakeholders and\/or shareholders of your organization that, due to lack of measurement, you do not know how much our poor data quality is costing them. Sounds extreme doesn\u2019t it. But we have all been hearing ideas around valuing organizations data and reporting it on regular basis. It just might happen. Look at the perturbances from Europe\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR<\/a>).<\/p>\n

According to the March 2017 MIT Sloan article<\/a>, many companies do not know the answer to the question “What is Your Data Worth?”<\/em>, but it seems reasonable to assume that if the data is of poor quality, that the data is literally worth less than if it were of pristine quality. And we should really do everything we can to keep those two words ‘worth’ and ‘less’ from combining when an auditor assesses the value of our data!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 6 weeks of my course, Data Quality Improvement at BCIT, I try to impart to them an understanding of how to \u2018discover\u2019 the instances of poor data quality in the data sets they are responsible for so that they can begin to help their team to ‘monetize’ the effects of that poor data […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-quality","tag-data-quality-cost","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"yoast_head":"\nHow much does poor data quality cost your organization? 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