How product naming conventions are a data quality issues?

In an ideal world we would have a universal product naming convention.  In practice this rarely happens and it's possible for different users in the same organisation to give different names to the same product.

'CopperWire', 'Copper Wire', 'cwire' may all refer to the same product , Copper Wire, but what happens if a user inputs copperwire in lower case and is advised that the product is out of stock because the system only recognises CopperWire as a stock item?

In this real example, the engineer left the depot after placing an order for copper wire, when it already existed under a different description or part number.  The impact?  Too much stock, wasted engineer's time and unhappy client!

I another example, a well-known DIY chain, when asked for MDF, responded that they didn't stock it.  However, when asked to search for medium density fibreboard, found they had plenty!

Sometimes the technology just doesn't help.  For example, data imported into an Excel spreadsheet is likely to be corrupted if the first part of the number is a zero, as Excel strips a leading zero from a number, so the telephone number 0207 123 4568 becomes 207 123 4568.  In this event, an auto dialler won't work and if the telephone number is used for cross matching or de-duplication the records might not match.

A single customer record creates a common language across the business which gets all departments on the same page, delivering the information required in context of specific departmental needs.

Our specialist data cleansing software uses comprehensive data look-up, standardisation formatting and advanced phonetics to de-duplicate,link, validate and standardise data.  Taking control of data quality significantly reduces costs, lowers stock levels, improves productivity and provides accurate information for more accurate decision making.