Business Strategy — Been There, Done That: How to Improve Data Quality. #Data #AI

 

Clean up your data and you’ll thank me.  Your institution’s data is a valuable asset, if not one of your most valuable assets.  Data is too often neglected and likely a defect-laden hot mess. 

 

Implementing and using AI is enabled and speeded with high quality data.  Even absent AI, higher quality data can dramatically improve operational performance:  speed, quality, and cost.

 

Some tips on how to go about cleaning up your data:

 

 

1. 1. Focus.  Identify your top “10” most important data sets.  Inventory?  Customer satisfaction?  Help Desk MTTR?  Sales Lead Conversions?

 

2. 2. Ownership.  If something is going to get done, someone needs to do it.  Appoint a Data Steward for each top “10” data set.  The Data Steward owns and is accountable for the quality and completeness of their data set.  Candidates to become Data Stewards are perhaps either the source of the data or the main user of the data. 

 

3. 3. Metrics.  Develop, implement, and manage metrics for each top “10” data set’s defect rate.  The Data Stewards should work with users of the data sets to define “defects.” 

 

4. 4. Manage.  Actively manage data quality.  The Data Stewards should review their defect rates results and improvement programs with upper management at least monthly.