Why Businesses Can Suffer from Bad Data
At this point, it’s a widely-held belief that data is king. If you’ve got the right data, after all, you’ll be able to make better business decisions and avoid the seemingly endless downfalls that tend to befall companies that are less prepared. In this rush to collect data, though, it seems that many assume that any form of data has some kind of inherent value. In reality, though, bad data can actually be much worse than no data at all. While the lack of data on a given subject can be troubling, it doesn’t carry with it the potential pitfalls that can accompany the accumulation of bad data. If you’re looking into master data management, you’ve got to start by looking at why you need to exclude bad data.
Bad Data Means Bad Decisions
As the world has seen recently, bad data can have lasting consequences. In fact, one can go so far as to say that the decisions brought on by bad data are far worse than those brought on by not having sufficient data. Why? Simply put, insufficient data leads to more caution than bad data. If you don’t have enough data to act on something, there’s a chance that you’ll be careful simply because you know that you’re going into a situation blind. If you have bad data, though, you’ll often find yourself running straight into a bad choice with reckless abandon.
Bad data has the horrifying potential to allow your company to do the wrong thing with the full assurance that it is making the right choice. This means committing resources where they don’t need to go and making the kinds of decisions that would be perfect – at least if reality matched up to what you’ve got in your reports. When you only have bad data to go on, you can only make decisions that hurt your company.
Bad Data Means Ruined Reputations
It’s easy to think of data problems in terms of immediate end products. If you use bad data and do something wrong, your company will lose money. It’s simple, but it’s not the end of that journey. Bad data can lead to many long term impacts on your business, not the least of which is your reputation. When you work off of bad data, you lose one of the things that’s most important to a big business – plausible deniability if and when things go wrong.
If you don’t have data, your business will have the excuse of not being able to know what’s coming next. It might make your business seem a bit foolish, but it’s forgivable. Bad data, though, makes your business seem incompetent. When there’s so many great master data management resources like those offered by Profisee out there, the public has little patience for those who don’t gather data correctly. When you use bad data, your business moves from one that was struck by bad circumstances to one that isn’t aware of how the world around it works. Once customers start to think of your business as incompetent, even more problems will begin to occur.
Bad Data Wastes Money
Gathering data isn’t an easy job. Major data management services like Profisee put in many long hours and use a wealth of tools to collate data in a usable manner. As you can imagine, this kind of vital processing isn’t done for free. The money spent is more than worth it, though, if the data can lead to actionable decisions. When the data is bad, the choices that your business will make won’t pay off. When those choices don’t pay off, you’re looking at potential profits flushed away.
If you’re working with no data, you’re looking at an inability to make decisions at all. Obviously, an inability to make intelligent movements can cost your business money but doing so will usually be done with at least a bit of trepidation. Nothing’s more expensive than a decision made with the full confidence of a company behind it, so bad data can eventually lead to your company throwing away money in a situation that would usually cause it to take only a slight loss.
Bad data really is worse than no data. It hurts your reputation, it hurts your ability to make decisions, and it hurts your bottom line. If you want to ensure that your business is able to avoid these issues, you must ensure that the data you gather is valid. Doing so might require help, but it’s more than worth the effort.