Data Quality: where does it belong?

Data Quality is not a technology issue, it's a business issue

Here is my opinion on why people think it is about technology. Business initiatives like MDM/BI/DQ and the like are being presented, sold on, and driven by technology experts. Information technology has carried business forward to the point where we are the chauffeurs for change and progress. Without the ability to integrate new technologies into a business, the business fails.  In this way, I believe that these disciplines are about technology.

To me business issues are sales, budgeting, customer service and marketing. Everything else like operations and reporting are so fused with technology now that they are, in a sense, a technology issue.

Let me take this theory of mine for a spin in that context. Let’s say we are driving, or "chauffeuring", a business executive towards a list of master product entries. Does he/she know these entries off the top of their head? Most likely not. How would you “steer” them in the right direction? Probably by querying the data and beginning with a list of values? The decision of which ones are selected might even require a count of popular values? In this way, technology is the vehicle to the master data destination and the business folks are in the back seat selecting routes from the suggestions provided by his/her driver.

This content originally appeared as a comment(s) in reference to a blog post by Henrik Liliendahl Sørensen here.