The danger of satisfaction

Are you satisfied with the quality of your organisation’s customer data? By satisfied, I mean do you honestly consider the data that you hold on your customers to be as up-to-date, accurate and as well looked after as is reasonably possible?

If your answer is ‘no’, then don’t worry, because you’re not alone. QAS has recently released Data quality – a shift in perceptions, the first of two in-depth reports into management attitudes to data quality and integrity, carried out by research group, NOP Business & Technology.

Of those surveyed, less than a quarter turned out to be ‘very satisfied’ with both the completeness and the accuracy of their customer data. Of the rest, a high proportion are clearly concerned that they may be holding and using data that’s not up to scratch. If this seems worryingly indicative of a national data crisis of colossal proportions, then pause to consider what the survey really signifies.

A similar survey carried out for QAS in 2002 shows managers in a far more bullish mood concerning data quality. This year’s respondents seem to have grown more self critical, more analytical and a good deal less inclined to take for granted that all is well. If organisations are marking their performance harder and asking more searching questions of themselves, then this can only be a good thing, and certainly explains the scarcity of ‘very satisfieds’.

But what’s changed to bring this about? What cultural shift has taken place within the space of a mere two years to give customer data such pride of place among corporate concerns at a time when you’d have thought everyone had plenty of other things to worry about.

The answer splits into two parts. A major factor has been the rise and rise of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, not only among large organisations with hundreds of thousands of customers to care for, but among small and mid-sized organisations as well. CRM has forced on many a scrutiny of processes they have never had to go through before. The QAS and NOP survey reveals beyond doubt that CRM adopters are leading the way in implementing full and comprehensive data policies, which in turn is leading to a quest for data integrity.

What’s changed at the same time is the elevation of corporate data to a matter of board level importance. As more and more organisations realise that data is their lifeblood, so the protection of that data has become a wider responsibility.

All organisations need to face up to the reality that data is never going to be 100 per cent accurate. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that unchecked and unmanaged data is not a problem. There’s really no way of measuring damage done and business lost thanks to poor customer information. Don’t fall victim to the seductive trap of benign satisfaction.

Guy Matthews, IT Magazine Editor