Do these complaints seem familiar?

• We have multiple instances of customer, product and supplier data
• It takes a long time to gather reliable management information
• Our customers complain that we don’t get their details right
• Our business runs on spreadsheets
• Our order to cash and procure to pay processes are beset by delay, error and rework
• Our management reports don't add up

These are common symptoms of poor data quality. Business relies heavily on information technology to support day to day operations and provide intelligence and insight on performance. Technology in turn is only as good as the data that runs through it – ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ was always – and remains – a fundamental truism of technology.

When a call centre operator misspells a customer name or captures their address incorrectly, that simple error can create expensive problems down the line. From simply sending mail to the wrong place, to failing to identify that the customer presents a risk to your business because the system failed to link to another account where the same customer defaulted on a payment.

How Deloitte can help
Our experience shows there is a positive ROI to be achieved by pinpointing and tackling data quality issues. We have a structured approach to tackling it: first you have to understand the quality of your data right now, then identify the impact to the business if data quality is poor. If that impact is sufficiently serious, controls, metrics, training and governance are needed to stop further degradation – some cleansing of existing data may also be required.

Our data quality assessment is a fast and effective way of quantifying the problem.

Download our data quality assessment product card for further information (PDF 99KB).