Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

LAYING THE DATA FOUNDATION: DATA QUALITY

Data are the most important raw material for building and implementing successful analytics solutions. A Gartner research report on Customer Data Quality and Integration claimed: “CRM solutions are good as the quality of the customer data that feeds it.”7 In the previous chapter, you learned about the importance of clearly defining and developing your critical business objectives across the enterprise. Now you need to start constructing the data foundation. Like fine residential architecture, the strength of your business analytics solution will depend on the strength of its foundation. And similar to architects, business analytics practitioners must engineer a data foundation that’s built to last. Rem Koolhass, a famous architect, often reiterates, “It’s not about form or function, it’s about performance.” This applies not only to residential architecture but also to business analytics. Whether your business objective with business analytics is to increase customer retention, identify new markets to penetrate, grow market share, develop new and successful products, or achieve some other purpose, data remains the foundation of your business analytics solutions.

Because data are the starting point of any business analytics solution, the quality and quantity will ultimately reflect the quality and quantity of your business analytics effectiveness and insights. Consequently, the success of business analytics depends mostly on the quality and ...