Book Image

Practical Data Quality

By : Robert Hawker
Book Image

Practical Data Quality

By: Robert Hawker

Overview of this book

Poor data quality can lead to increased costs, hinder revenue growth, compromise decision-making, and introduce risk into organizations. This leads to employees, customers, and suppliers finding every interaction with the organization frustrating. Practical Data Quality provides a comprehensive view of managing data quality within your organization, covering everything from business cases through to embedding improvements that you make to the organization permanently. Each chapter explains a key element of data quality management, from linking strategy and data together to profiling and designing business rules which reveal bad data. The book outlines a suite of tried-and-tested reports that highlight bad data and allow you to develop a plan to make corrections. Throughout the book, you’ll work with real-world examples and utilize re-usable templates to accelerate your initiatives. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a clear understanding of every stage of a data quality initiative and be able to drive tangible results for your organization at pace.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Getting Started
6
Part 2 – Understanding and Monitoring the Data That Matters
10
Part 3 – Improving Data Quality for the Long Term

The Business Case for Data Quality

In this chapter, I will focus on a key step of any data quality initiative – how to explain the need for it internally in the organization and get the support required to get started. Chapter 1 established that data quality initiatives do not always get assigned as much value as other initiatives. In this chapter, I will explore the reasons behind this in greater depth and what can be done to maximize the chances of a successful outcome.

I will consider what motivates decision-makers, how their decisions are typically made, and how to position data quality in this context. Then, I will explore the elements of a successful data quality initiative (people, processes, and technology) and how to estimate the costs. The chapter will also discuss how to create a picture of the likely benefits of your initiative in a way that convinces decision-makers to support you. It will give practical examples of successes and what contributed to these outcomes...