Data Quality on a Budget

We read an interesting blog by Graham Rhind yesterday regarding the frustration with organizations not appreciating the value of data quality and its importance. He makes some excellent points about how important data quality is to all organizations.

Unfortunately, not many organizations currently share Graham's sense of urgency regarding data quality and it costs them dearly. Thus, data quality will continue to need evangelists such as Graham.

In addition, many organizations expect demonstrable ROI for investments including data quality. (See our blogs on ROI for data quality here and here.) While Graham finds the need to demonstrate ROI frustrating as he believes that data quality will always prove beneficial, it is unlikely that there will be a move away from this sort of capital budgeting exercise any time soon.

However, there may be some ways to move an organization into data quality without having to get bogged down in a time consuming exercise to demonstrate ROI. Not long ago, we listened in on a webinar with Steve Sarsfield discussing "Affordable Data Governance". Steve advocated a strategy he called "land and expand". The gist of this strategy is to pick low-cost data quality solutions that can still have a measurable improvement on data quality. While low-cost solutions may not be the comprehensive solutions that some organizations need, they can often be implemented without having to engage in a lengthy capital budgeting exercise since many organizations have floors for approval of expenditures below which individuals or departments are free to make their own decisions. Moreover, if the solution can demonstrate the value of data quality, it will enhance the case for more comprehensive solutions and help to drive adoption of data quality within an organization.

An example of a low-cost solution is cloud computing solutions for data quality. Some solutions can cost as little as a few hundred dollars per month and, yet, provide very high returns. This expenditure is often well within the budget of a department and will not require the need to gain approval for the expenditure.