Bad data quality hinders Aussie organisations
Bad data quality hinders Aussie organisations
Aug 12, 2005: Sixty five percent of Australian organisations have admitted to losing revenue due to poor data quality, as a result of not having the time or resources to address this problem, according to the results of an international research study.
QAS, an address management specialist that helps organisations to capture accurate address data and conserve database integrity, commissioned the study to be carried out by Dynamic Markets, an independent research organisation.
The findings also reveal that only four percent of the respondents to this survey had a single champion responsible for data accuracy, which means in most cases that nobody is really accountable for the problem.
Glenn Parker, the managing director of QAS Australia, said that the research shows that Australian companies generally all face the same challenges when trying to maintain accurate information on their customers.
"Organisations here cite three obstacles to improving data quality, a lack of time and internal resources, the limited ability to keep track of a transient customer base and a lack of budget.
"Less than half (48 percent) of companies said that compliance with customer data regulations was extremely important to them, which is a startling statistic for a country with so much legislation governing customer information and privacy."
84 percent of the respondents claim that mistakes are made at data entry point, meaning this could be made at any level because 41 percent of respondents claim that all employees are responsible for handling customer data with responsibility for accuracy lying with the head of IT, who they said owned the data in 56 percent of cases.
QAS claims that only a fifth of Australian organisations have a dedicated data strategy in place, but also points out the positives for Australia.
Parker explained: "The good news for Australia is that many organisations here are more willing to accept and admit that potential revenue is lost through missed business opportunities compared with a lot of other countries like Spain and U.K..Data quality issues impede the profiling of customer and prospect databases and result in loss of potential revenue."
He closed by saying that though there are many improvements to be made in customer data quality, the initial acknowledgement that there is an issue is the first step in improving data quality. He believes that once you recognise the problem you can look to invest in better data management practices such as address management.
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