Informatica Data Quality

It’s coming up to the end of my first year as Head of Informatica’s Data Quality Division and what a year it’s been. Data Quality has long been an obsession of mine – long before Informatica acquired the data quality software company I headed up, Similarity Systems, and even before my colleagues and I founded Similarity six years earlier.

We set up Similarity Systems in 2000 because of our absolute belief that data quality was on the cusp of making a breakthrough as one of the critical performance drivers for large businesses and organizations everywhere.

Over the years since then we have seen data quality move rapidly up the agenda. Data was once the sole preserve of IT – but today boardroom executives already have found reason to talk about and care about data and data quality – Good data quality can be the foundation for success, while poor data quality is a root cause of failure in many of the key initiatives for today’s businesses and government organizations. These executives know customer service is a data quality issue, compliance is a data quality issue, supply chain automation is a data quality issue … I could go on, but there will lots of time for that later.

My goal in writing this blog is to share views and experience with others who are passionate about data quality. I see it as a forum for widening understanding of the enormous business value that can be generated through active, effective data quality management.

My days revolve around meeting with data quality customers, meeting with partners and working with our own product development and implementation specialists. Through this blog I hope to share some of the insights and experience garnered from this day-to-day interaction with these groups. And hopefully my conversations with these groups will be influenced by the feedback I receive from you through this blog.

I have set myself only two guidelines. I’ll be aiming to stick to unerringly to them:
• Keep it short (because I’m busy and you probably are too)
• Keep it business focused (because data quality is a business problem opportunity)

Until next time…