Killing Bad Data Practices - Acknowledging The Problem is Half The Battle

I posted on LinkedIn earlier this week The Big Data Challenges All Organizations Face summing some symptoms and solutions to siloed databases and ungoverned data practices. If you work on data, manage the databases, or rely on it to make decisions then you probably understand bad data issues and can relate to some of the symptoms:

Do you email spreadsheets between coworkers to edit and review? Are there only a select few people in the organization capable of pulling or interpreting data out of core systems because of different data quality issues? Do presentations provide insights backed by data sources and assumptions? Does it seem like you have hundreds of reports and dozens of dashboards but none of them suit your day to day needs? Do you start a new analysis by cutting a new data set, or are you able to leverage defined tools to connect to predefined data repositories?

My solutions involve better governed self service BI programs, partnering with departments that have critical data needs like the CMO and marketing, and getting alignment on the data platforms needed for growth.

Need some examples? I'm sure you can site some examples, but these Excel horror stories collected by the European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group should frighten any data scientist, data architect, or data driven business executive.

My next posts on this subject will be solutions focused. Remember, acknowledging there is a problem and recognizing its impact is half the battle.