Data Quality Management

Introduction:

Data Quality Management (DQM) is a practice that aims to maintain a high quality of data. DQM

extends from data acquisition to distribution of data. DQM is about employing processes,
methods, and technologies to ensure the quality of the data meets specific business
requirements

Abstraction:

Data quality is crucial in measuring and analyzing science, technology and

innovation adequately, which allows for the proper monitoring of research efficiency,
productivity and even strategic decision making. In this chapter, the concept of data
quality will be defined in terms of the different dimensions that together determine
the quality of data. Next, methods will be discussed to measure these dimensions
using objective and subjective methods. Specific attention will be paid to the
management of data quality through the discussion of critical success factors in
operational, managerial and governance processes including training that affect data
quality.

What is data quality management?

 is the process of reviewing and updating your customer data to minimize

inaccuracies and eliminate redundancies, such as duplicate customer records
and duplicate mailings to the same address.

 In our data-driven era, the ability of a company or organization to successfully

acquire, retain, and communicate with customers depends entirely on
the quality of data.

 Inaccurate home addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers lead to

missed communications and may incur fines when you inadvertently contact
individuals who do not want to be on your mailing, phone, or email lists. If your
understanding of the demographics of your potential and current
customers is incorrect, you will create marketing campaigns that are not properly
targeted to your clients and suffer from a much lower return on investment (ROI)
than if your communications were based on accurate demographic information.

 Ensuring that your customer data is current and correct is a task that no

company or organization can neglect if it wants to succeed in the long run.
That is where data quality management comes in.

 Data management requires the proper planning, tools, and people for its

success. Putting together a comprehensive data quality management plan is a
 worthy investment of time and resources that will pay off over time. As your
customer data continually improves, waste is eliminated, and marketing
campaigns become more engaging and successful.

Acquisition of data

Companies and organizations acquire customer data through numerous

channels. In some cases, the customers themselves provide their data either
over the phone or via Internet forms. In the process of collecting data, errors can
be introduced.

Maintenance of data

Once entered in the system, customer data must be maintained. At this point,
what is data quality management and what does it involve? Essentially, you are
trying to keep associates who work with the data regularly from entering errors,
and you are striving to make sure that contact information changes are properly
recorded so that you do not miss your customers when they move. Data hygiene
services that verify current data and check for duplications are vital at this point
of data management.

How Does DQM Work?

 Many DQM systems follow a similar procedural design, although they use
different terms. At the root of DQM are its people, often including:

• A program manager to provide general oversight and program implementation.

• A data steward responsible for more focused data management, defining rules,
etc.

• A data manager or analyst responsible for the nuts and bolts — qualifying data
needs and quantifying them into the processes and systems they are measured
by.

 The DQM process is often organized into:

• Establishing data quality definitions and rules — accuracy, consistency across

platforms and systems, completeness, timeliness, uniqueness of data or lack of
duplicates — as well as desired outcomes and metrics.

• Analyzing or profiling data.

• Monitoring, recording and reporting exceptions/bad data.

• Cleansing data, or correcting and repairing errors.

 Four reasons why you need Data Quality Management:

Better functioning business

 All the basic operations of a business are managed quickly and efficiently when
the data has been managed properly. High quality data enhances decision
making at all levels of operations and management.

Efficient use of resources

 Low quality data in an organization means resources including finances are used
inefficiently. When businesses maintain data quality through DQM practices
saves them from wastage of resources leading to bigger and better results.

Competitive advantage

 Reputation precedes every business. A business with a good reputation gains a

higher competitive advantage over others. High quality data ensures that a
business maintains a high reputation. Low quality data has been proven to bring
about distrust from customers, leading to their dissatisfaction in a business’
products and services.

Good business leads

 Creating a marketing campaign from erroneous data where the targeted

customers do not exist, makes no sense. When the leads are from poor quality
data, then there is no point targeting them with campaigns. Accurate customer
data brings about better conversion from a better reach. Good data management
initiatives therefore, must be practiced

What are the key features of Data Quality Management?

 A good DQM makes use of a system that has various features that will help in
improving the trustworthiness of organizational data. Let us outline the various
features of a good DQM;

 Data cleansing corrects unknown data types, duplicate records, as well as

substandard data representations. Data cleansing ensures that data
standardization rules that are needed to enable analysis and insights from your
data sets are followed. The data cleansing process also establishes hierarchies
and makes data customizable to fit an organization’s unique data requirements.
 Data profiling - is the process of monitoring and cleansing data. Data profiling is
used to;

 Validate available data against the standard statistical measures,

 Create data relationships

 Verify the available data against matching descriptions

 The data profiling process establishes trends that help in discovering,

understanding and exposing inconsistencies in the data, for any corrections and
adjustments.

What are the metrics that measure Data Quality?

 Data quality metrics are very important in assessing the efforts made to increase
the quality of your data. Data quality metrics must be top-notch and must be
clearly defined. In the data quality metrics, be sure to look out for; accuracy,
consistency, completeness, integrity, and timeliness. Let us discuss different
categories of data quality metrics and what they hold in;

Accuracy

 Data accuracy refers to the degree to which the said data accurately reflects an
event or object that is described.

Completeness

 Data is considered to be complete when it fulfills certain expectations of

comprehensiveness in an organization. Data completeness indicates if there is
enough of it that can draw meaningful conclusions.

Consistency

 Data consistency simply specifies that two data values retrieved from multiple
and separate data sets should in no way conflict with each other. However, data
consistency does not necessarily imply that the data is correct

Integrity

 Also referred to as data validation, data integrity refers to structurally testing data
to ensure compliance with an organization’s data procedures. Such data shows
that it has no unintended errors, and that it corresponds to its appropriate data
types.

Timeliness
 When your data isn’t ready when users need it, it fails to fulfill the data quality
dimension of timeliness.

 Some examples of data metrics that help an organization to measure data quality
efforts include;

The ratio of data to errors

 This data metric allows tracking of the number of known errors within a data set
corresponding to the actual size of the data set.

Number of empty values

 This metric counts the number of times there is an empty field within a data set.
Empty values usually indicate missing information or information recorded in the
wrong field.

Data time-to-value

 This metric evaluates how long it takes to gain meaningful insights from a data
set.

Data transformation error rate

 This metric will track how often a data transformation operation will fail.

Data storage costs

 If an organization stores data without using it, this could be an indication that the
data is of low quality. Conversely, if the organization’s data storage costs decline
while the data operations stay the same or continue to grow, the quality of the
data is most likely improving.

Conclusion

 Research organizations worldwide are using data on research input and output,
that is, publications, patents, research data nowadays for a wide variety of use
purposes, such as evaluation, reporting and visualization of a researcher’ or
research organization’s expertise. This places high demands on the quality of the
data gathered for these purposes, which have—in most cases—largely outgrown
the initial intentions when the data systems were constructed. Moreover, the
research world has evolved in a global, dynamic manner in which research data
are increasingly being used in order to monitor the efficiency of research
processes, the research productivity and even strategic decision making. In order
to safeguard correct data analysis, research-related data must be assessed on
 all relevant quality dimensions, and inaccuracies must be addressed using data
quality improvement trajectories as discussed in this chapter. The integration of a
data quality management policy, is the only way to ensure the fitness for use of
research-related data for various applications and business processes across the
research world as the impact of inaccurate date can have tremendous effects on
a researcher’s or research organization’s future prospects.

Reference

References:

Bauman, J. (2021). Data Quality Management: What You Need To Know. SAS Insights. Retrieved June 1,
2021 from as.com/en_ph/insights/articles/data-management/data-quality-management-what-you-
need-to-know.html?fbclid=IwAR0pPnZqRnqiZ4dZHw3tx0ghnPgTpuPTxdI5evtGjgBk-
CZWRw4SgyMYl5A#/.

Pembroke, D. (2019). The Importance of Data Quality Management. The Univeristy of North Carolina.
Retrieved June 2, 2021 from https://online.uncp.edu/articles/mba/the-importance-of-data-quality-
management.aspx?fbclid=IwAR0iBHLp_BDiUYHq9VA3-u0n2LHnNoJMAJ6hoaZ5i1VIadt-rIGRYrParVI.

Vancauwenbergh, S. (2019). Data Quality Management., Scientometrics Recent Advances. InTechOpen.

Retrieved June 2, 2021 from https://www.intechopen.com/books/scientometrics-recent-advances/data-
quality-management?fbclid=IwAR0pPnZqRnqiZ4dZHw3tx0ghnPgTpuPTxdI5evtGjgBk-CZWRw4SgyMYl5A.

Prepared by:

Mark Vincent Larita

Bilgian Munos

Gemil Aleonar