How to keep your business data trustworthy
- by 7wData
Today, virtually every Business is increasingly reliant on data to drive critical decision-making about the strategies that will deliver sustained growth. This puts the issue of data veracity – the provenance or trustworthiness of the data – firmly in the spotlight.
Veracity is a term that has not been widely used across the industry. Everybody talks about the power of insight and the power of data, but far less so about the trust element.
Yet unverified data presents an ever-growing threat to companies, leading to insights and decisions that are, at best, of questionable value, and at worst, damaging to the business.
There are many things that impact the quality and veracity of data throughout its life cycle. Errors can be introduced in the collection process, as it is cleaned or moved across disparate systems. It may have been gathered for a different purpose than what it is now being used for. Or it can simply be too old.
When United Airlines recently looked at the data it was using to predict seating demands, the company discovered it was actually data from forecasts that were decades old. This lack of veracity resulted in inaccurate pricing models that cost United Airlines $1 billion (£700 milllion) per annum in missed revenue.
It is therefore both surprising and alarming to discover that while 79pc of executives agree that their organisations are basing their most critical systems and strategies on data, many have not invested in the capabilities to verify the truth within it.
Without establishing the veracity of that data, businesses leave themselves vulnerable and open to a threat that is critically overlooked.
In many organisations data is ingested via a large number of external systems or active partners in the supply chain and derived from multiple forms of technology, including social media and connected devices, before it reaches the end customer.
Unless these organisations can trace how the data was handled, formed or leveraged, it may not be as valid as it was when it first came in.
However, organisations can address this problem.
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