Impact of Bad Data Quality

Most of what is stated here is obvious, but could be used for people to create business case for data quality program. It may also relate to the incidents they must have faced in real-life.

Bad Data Quality leading to Operational Inefficiency :

• Just like a bad product, every time a wrong data is detected, root-cause analysis and corrective actions eat-up organization energies.
• Internal impacts like investigation, Root cause analysis, fixing process/IT issues and conducting constant monitoring.
• External impacts like addressing all the implications of wrong data like stop-payment for faulty cheques issued, Recall of credit cards issued on wrong addresses.

Data Quality issues' Customer Retention impact:

• Wrong billing OR bank statement leading to customer loss of trust impacting customer satisfaction and retention.
• Customer complaints leading to customer attrition..
• Missing on high value customer-segments.

Customer Acquisition Impact:

• Undelivered mail leads to failed mailer campaigns.
• Mailed products getting returned due to errors in names.
• Dissatisfied sales and distribution channels, due to erroneous compensation.

Operational effectiveness:

• Not able to track the status of the delivery.
• Errors in the delivered product.

Reputation Impact:

• A data issue impacting a wide set of stakeholders could lead to media coverage.
• Major product recall.

Shareholder Impact:

• Faulty financial statements and less than appropriate audit ratings could lead to loss of confidence on the shareholders and investing public.

Regulatory impact:

• Faulty regulatory submissions, leading to considerable legal exposure.
• Bad Data quality leading to customer OR shareholder impact, could result in lawsuits.

Decision impact:

• Quality of decision depends on quality of data. Bad data quality leads to misinformed OR under-informed decisions.

Business Management impact:

• Lack of data on the key performance indicators, hampers objective performance management.