How fast does your database become out of date? How accurate was it in the first place?

New EU data protection regulations are scheduled to be finalised this year and will start to bite in 2014. The implications are wide ranging and expensive, presenting enormous challenges to UK and European businesses.

A good way to make all your business efforts futile is to fill all its applications with bad data and keep it that way. It's really easy to do this. You just need to ignore all the advice about how to have quality data, and carry on doing the things you've always done.

The latest Data Advantage Report makes depressing reading. The recent global research found that, while 99% of respondents to their survey claim to have a data strategy, 94% still have data quality issues. Their data is incomplete or they can't find what they need and think it is missing. Nearly half said they thought their problems came from having multiple databases.

Suppose you were the CEO of a luxury hospitality chain with hotels in major cities around the world. How do you keep tabs on world travellers who turn up in umpteen different countries?

Traditionally, many marketing activities don't expect quick responses, and it's hard to measure the return on investment in awareness raising, which is often a major element of the marketing brief.

Match Version 8 combines fixes and application enhancements which offer an improved user experience, plus a new data profiling capability.

If you have a dog, does it have a microchip? If not, you have three years to get one. In 2016, it will become compulsory for all dogs owned in the UK to be microchipped.

The Midata initiative is a government campaign to make companies release their personal consumer data to individual customers. This has already started rolling out to major organisations in certain sectors and will eventually become compulsory across the board. Companies will need to able to produce an accurate and understandable report of a person's consumption and activity over time for any individual who requests it.

Ever since Tim Berners-Lee invented the worldwide web, it has been augmenting the features of the physical world in a virtual mirror. All over the globe, people are realising a magnitude of potential and possibilities to be unlocked. For some these are fast becoming reality, others are still at the wish list stage. But the internet paved the way for the age of Big Data, and now the ways of collecting, managing and using Big Data, together with how it is affecting the way we operate and behave, are always in the news.

Welcome to the DQ Global - 'get your data fit for 2013' plan

Step 1 – Diet

Duplicates are an excess, remove them from your data and you immediately improve your data health, you will also avoid the wasted time, money and brand damage associated with duplicate records.

The police are already warning the public about fraudsters and their Christmas time activities. Because everyone is in spending mode, it can be a lucrative time for them, and at great expense to the consumer. We clearly need to heed warnings and advice about protecting our passwords and financial data, shopping securely online, preventing malware on our computers and so on.

One of my favourite retailers has been collecting my details every time I shop there for about the last five years. Whether I shop online or I go to the store to make a purchase I am asked for my details, I am obviously on their database as a customer and prospect.

Monday December 3rd 2012 was the best sales day ever for retailers in the UK. Facts released by Experian say they took 32% more orders than on 'Cyber Monday' in 2011.

Cyber Monday always follows Thanksgiving Day in the US, which falls on the last Thursday in November. On that day this year, online shopping figures shot up, with 112 million visits to online retailers by British shoppers, who spent an average 15 hours on retail websites.

A recent Policy Exchange report reckons that the UK government could save up to £33 billion of public money by making better use of its big data: all the enormous datasets held by various departments.