
3
At about the time I started writing this book, I received an email from an
Information Professional, G.P. Here are the edited words of G.P.:
“My career in Information Management has now taken me from [Company 1],
to [Company 2], to [Company 3], to [Company 4]. The thing that they all have
in common is a desire to cut corners and deal with quality later. It takes a lot of
energy to be the Information Quality cheerleader, and I find it discouraging and
overwhelming at times. Keep writing your articles and books to encourage all the
people like me who are dealing with these issues every day.”
G.P., this book is written especially for people like you who care about your
end-Customers and your internal Information Consumers, who require Quality
Information to perform their work effectively to accomplish the enterprise mis-
sion and to stay in business.
The principle of management by quantity or speed over quality is a failed
management philosophy.
What is our experience of the costs of poor quality information?
In this chapter I provide specific real-world anecdotes of the high costs of low
quality Information and Information Systems.
C H A P T E R
1
Process and Business Failure:
The High Costs of Low
Quality Information
“In the U.S.A., about a third of what we do consists
of redoing work previously ‘done’.”
1
Joseph M. Juran
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