Establishing 'Making it Happen' as a 'Formal & Predictable' Discipline

Data Quality Approach Finalization	Data Quality Policy

ENCYCLOPEDIA→ Enterprise Intelligence → - Data Quality → - Data Quality Program →

Data Quality Program Analyze Phase and Business case Closure

After the thinking process is over, its time to come out with a comprehensive proposal for implementing DQ program.

Firming up the business Case for Data Quality Program

This is toughie- Quantifying the business case for a Data Quality Program is somewhat similar to a profit & loss statement for an internal control OR audit OR Business Contingency Planning function. There is no fixed opinion on the impact of occurrence of an event OR its probability of occurrence.

Here are some methods one can deploy to bring it close to a typical revenue/cost initiative:

Leverage the findings of Data Mapping & Assessment.
Ask the business owners during DQ Program Analyze Phase- Approach Finalization to define the business case for ownership. A DQ program can only ride on the shoulders of business owners.
Using the audit & internal control findings as the basis.
Using regulatory exposure as the basis.
Conduct a quick study on the business impact in terms of head-counts, expenses and write-offs to set right the problems created by data quality. This will provide the ‘real monies’, which are getting wasted due to DQ issues.

Completing the ‘Analysis Phase’ of Data Quality Program

As stated before the analysis phase is the first stage, when one gets a high confidence quality program plan.

Typically a healthy estimate is expected at Data Quality Program Initiation. This works for projects (like implementing SAP, implementing a CRM initiative..) as which are related to something new and have similar implementations at other sites.

The Data quality program is mostly related to changes in the existing set-up and most of them not structural, but at the lower level of processes. Secondly, the changes needed are very specific to the given organization, and one cannot use a parallel to do a good estimation.

Therefore a Data Quality Program Initiation in a Data Quality Program will be mainly to get the sponsorship for the analysis phase. A high level approach and estimate of the entire program is definitely part of the project agreement (an outcome of the initiation phase), the stake-holders should be ready for a significant change post analysis, when they look at the analysis phase out-put, which will contain the following-