Informatica Data Quality

All he wanted for Christmas was anything but what he got. Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron CEO moved to his new residence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Waseca, Minnesota, where his sentence calls for him to live for the next 24 years for his role in fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and other crimes leading to the collapse of Enron. These crimes led to the loss of thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in company stock and more than $2 billion in employee pension plans.

But Mr. Skilling will have a new job as well. He will probably work as a food service helper, painter or plumber. While this is not the cush job he had as CEO at Enron where he earned $151.7 million over the three years during the time he perpetuated his fraud, he will get from 14 to 40 cents per hour. At the top pay, Skilling could earn $832 per year. At that rate it would take 74.5 million years to pay back the stock and pension losses he foisted on the stakeholders.

So what is the point here? There are two points:

1. The manipulation of the financial books was fraud. Regardless of the cause, fraud in this case, the inaccurate financial information on which investors made decisions resulted in huge losses for the innocent people caught up in this scandal.
2. As a resource, managers must have accountability for information just as much as it does for people and financial resources. Sarbanes-Oxley is right in holding top management accountable for the quality of financial information that can lead to such devastating consequences, as we saw in Enron.

Message: Managers must have accountability for the quality of information produced in their area to meet not just the needs of their department, but the needs of their downstream information consumers. Without quality information (accurate, complete, timely, clearly presented), processes will fail, with costs that shrink the bottom line to costs that are enterprise-threatening.

What do you think? Let me hear from you.