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Data Quality

A data quality strategy is crucial for organizations to maximize the value derived from their data, focusing on accuracy and fitness for purpose. The importance of data quality varies by industry and use case, necessitating a tailored approach that considers specific dimensions such as accuracy, completeness, and consistency. Organizations should prioritize data quality efforts based on their unique goals and acceptable levels of risk, ensuring that data users are involved in assessing data accuracy.

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14 views5 pages

Data Quality

A data quality strategy is crucial for organizations to maximize the value derived from their data, focusing on accuracy and fitness for purpose. The importance of data quality varies by industry and use case, necessitating a tailored approach that considers specific dimensions such as accuracy, completeness, and consistency. Organizations should prioritize data quality efforts based on their unique goals and acceptable levels of risk, ensuring that data users are involved in assessing data accuracy.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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Data quality strategy

A data quality strategy can improve an organization's ability to generate


value from data, but determining quality depends on the processes and use
cases.

Data quality is essential to enabling businesses to see returns on data


collection and analysis investments.

Data quality is the degree to which a data set and the process that
produces it is fit for its purpose. Accuracy is one significant component of
data quality and reflects the degree to which the data conforms to the
correct value of a standard.

It is essential to keep in mind that data quality is highly application and use
case specific. A data set collected as part of one process may or may not
reflect the appropriate data quality and accuracy for another use case.
Organizations can start by understanding the benefits of data quality and
considering their unique needs.

Why is data quality important?


Data is now universally recognized as a value multiplier that drives growth and
innovation, according to Marco Vernocchi, global chief data officer at EY, a
professional services network.

Data quality attains greater significance in this context, especially as organizations


increasingly collect, organize, analyze and commercialize their data assets for a
competitive advantage. For organizations, data quality is as much a process as a
measure.
"Data quality is a core data management discipline that employs processes and
capabilities to ensure fitness of data for its intended use," Vernocchi said.

When transforming into a data-driven organization, it is critical that these


capabilities are standard, but still customizable for greater adoption across the
enterprise. One of the most important aspects of data quality is that clean,
consistent and accurate data instills greater trust in the organization and enables
informed decision-making with high confidence.

How do you define data quality?


Every organization defines data quality differently depending on its goals, its
tolerance for errors and the potential upside of a given use case. For example, a
healthcare facility has a much lower tolerance for errors than an e-commerce
business.

Understanding what the data is and how it might evolve are key to monitoring and
benefiting from data quality. It also depends on how data is being used. Is
directionally accurate data good enough or is more specific data required? Are
there fault tolerances to consider? For example, in an IoT situation, consider
whether actual valves might blow or portions of the grid might drop.

"Businesses should apply a pragmatic approach to data quality that will align with
their core business goals," Vernocchi said.

6 dimensions of data quality


To see the benefits of a data quality strategy, organizations must start by defining a
robust framework that lays out a foundational set of data quality dimensions. This
typically includes accuracy, completeness, consistency, conformity, integrity and
timeliness. The importance of these dimensions can vary depending on the data
entity, use case and investment budget under consideration.
For instance, all of these elements might be critically important in an emergency
room application for capturing health telemetry data. However, a gaming company
developing different options based on gamer telemetry might see good results even
if some of the data were missing -- particularly if it would require significant
investment to chase down the missing data.

Organizations must evaluate their industry and data needs to adequately determine
the requirements for the six dimensions of data quality and the best application for
each unique use case.

Building a flexible methodology to assess the data quality confidence scores


against these dimensions is also essential. For example, businesses should try to
avoid the trap of zero tolerance for data errors.

"Though relevant in specific scenarios, a zero-tolerance approach often provides


diminishing returns beyond a certain data quality threshold," Vernocchi said.

Each organization must also determine if its data is fit for the purposes and the
context for which it is used. The best team to discern a data element's quality is one
with the greatest familiarity with the context in which the data was collected, how
it was collected and what it was trying to accomplish.
"Data users will always be the best judges of data accuracy," said JP Romero,
technical manager of the enterprise information management practice at Kalypso, a
digital technology and consulting company.

Focusing appropriate efforts


It is helpful to measure data quality issues as noise, which can help characterize the
system's ability to adapt.

"Prioritize where data has to be pristine and where some noise is acceptable, and be
upfront about the levels of risk you're willing to accept," said Alicia Frame,
director of graph data science at Neo4j, a graph database company.

It is essential to know and document when pristine data is needed, and be clear
when sorting through an ocean of data to find the desired information. For
example, if critical investment decisions are based on 10 data points, those data
points must be correct. If an organization is trying to draw conclusions from 10
billion data points, it is OK for some of them to be noise.

Be honest about the uncertainty and gaps in the data, Frame said. It is better to
report a margin of error rather than overcommit to a single number.

One helpful strategy is to align data quality standards and approaches with the
business value and goals for any given business process, said Satya Sachdeva, vice
president of insights and data at Sogeti, an IT consulting company and part of
Capgemini. Organizations need to set distinct data quality goals for each data
category and focus efforts accordingly to achieve complete data quality.

For example, a financial organization calculating vested balance for retirement


plans must have accurate hire date and date of birth data. Similarly, marketing
teams need accurate contact information for mail campaigns to help reduce waste
-- and thus cost.

"The best way to begin modernizing an organization's data management is to begin


with modernizing how it aggregates and standardizes the data that needs to be
managed, mastered, quality checked and governed," said Faisal Alam, technology
consulting markets leader at EY.

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