Improving Data Warehouse and Business Information Quality: Methods for Reducing Costs and Increasing Profits

CHAPTER 13

Implementing an Information Quality Improvement Environment

“We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we had when we created the problems.”

–ALBERT EINSTEIN

Shortcuts taken to produce information fast without attention to quality are paid for multiple times over in the costs to find and correct the data and to recover from the process failure. Why do organizations continue to do this? Pure and simple: The management systems and performance measures reinforce nonquality information production and tolerate the costs of information scrap and rework.

To solve the information quality problems, we must change the way we think about information and the way we manage—or should I say, mismanage—it. Information is not “documentation” or “clerical” output; it is a strategic business resource. Information is not a “byproduct” of business processes; it is a true “product” created by one process and required for successful performance of others. When that data is bad, processes fail.

To implement sustainable information quality improvement requires breaking those things that motivate nonquality behavior. This requires culture change. Quick wins can be achieved without culture change to be sure. However, to sustain an environment of business performance excellence you must cut through the barriers that prevent people from doing a good job. Any organization with a culture of speed or productivity or reducing costs as a means of increasing profits will not thrive in the Information ...