Informatica Perspectives

Over the last few months, I have had a number of discussions with clients at various stages of planning a data quality initiative. Some clients are just starting to take the data quality plunge, while others are evaluating how to leverage the successes of past projects into building out a formal data governance initiative. When I start talking to clients about their goals around data quality, I often start with the same basic question, regardless of where they fall from a maturity process around data quality. The question is simply – does the business care?

I spoke at a data quality dinner a few weeks ago and found a number of heads nodding when I posed this question to the group. As we chatted about this over dinner, the common theme I heard was that this remains the challenge - how to ensure that the business (who owns the data) is going to partner with the technical team in defining the necessary processes, standards and rules needed for the data quality software to be worthwhile. As I noted in my presentation, regardless of the technology being used, if the data is being transformed in a way that does not meet the needs of the business, it will likely be met with resistance and the data quality software may end up as an expensive piece of shelf-ware.

Since getting agreement that the business needs to care is usually easy enough, the next logical question is how do we make the business care if they don’t currently? To begin, to ensure the business is engaged there should be a specific business case associated with the data quality project. Is the project geared towards regulatory compliance? Cost reduction? Will the results of the initiative be revenue generating? Finding a reason the business should care is often going to be tied back to the end result. Essentially, what is the value to the business in spending the time and resource to support a data quality initiative? For some examples of the types of concrete benefits typically associated with a data quality initiative visit the Informatica Data Quality page.

In some cases, the return on investment might not be completely concrete; however, there should be a basic purpose to investing in the project. If this isn’t identified or more investigation is still required, an alternative approach would be to start with a Data Quality Assessment, which can be the pilot project and designed to solidify the business case and provide cost justification for a larger initiative.

By getting the business to care, you begin the process of ensuring a collaborative effort in addressing the data quality needs within the organization. This also becomes the foundation for a larger data governance program, which is something I will discuss in future blogs.

How do you get your company to care about data quality?