After the last year and a half, the importance of using data to generate insights and guide the direction of your business has become even more important.
As organisations around the world try to leverage their data more, many of them are finding the insights drawn aren’t quite working, and in this blog, we detail just why that might be.
The Iceberg of Ignorance
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. That’s what will do you in.” – Mark Twain
This quote often encapsulates a lot of the issues faced by businesses.
In 1989, consultant Sidney Yoshida came up with the concept of the “iceberg of ignorance”, which posits that 100% of a business’s problems are known by front-line staff, but top-level management only know of 4% of those problems.
If we apply this to data quality, the top-level managers will be looking at the tip of their data iceberg, and seeing what they believe to be organised, formatted and correct data records that should be providing useful insights.
The front-line staff, however, have a very different opinion…
What lurks beneath…
The colleagues who are working “at the coalface” of a business, on the shop floor or dealing with customers directly, will know exactly how deep the iceberg goes.
Through using the CRM systems daily, they will know why the data the organisation has isn’t providing the insights needed.
They’ll know the issues with the data capture processes, the workarounds that they need to use to get work done that ultimately leave incorrect records, and they may even know how these issues could be addressed, but don’t have the time or power to put them into effect.
How DQ Can Help Right the Ship
At DQ Global we are uniquely positioned to help you discover just how deep the iceberg goes, and help you draw up an action plan of how to right the ship and avoid disaster.
With over 25 years’ experience driving data quality, our DQ Diagnostics service can help you figure out the root cause of your businesses data quality issues. You can find out more about these sessions with our data quality experts here.
