dq:view - Steve Tuck on Data Quality

dq:View has moved...

Hi folks,

Thanks to everyone that has been following dq:View, but I've now taken the decision to move the blog to Datanomic's corporate site. I hope you'll continue to follow my witterings at http://www.datanomic.com/category/resources/blog/ or via an appropriate feed; RSS or Atom.

You can also find me online on LinkedIn as http://www.linkedin.com/in/SteveTuck, on Plaxo as http://stevetuck.myplaxo.com and if you're into Twitter, you can follow my Tweets at http://twitter.com/SteveTuck.

All the best,

Steve

p.s. There are already 2 new entries for you to read on data quality related topics at http://www.datanomic.com/category/resources/blog/.

dn:Director - a fresh approach to data quality

Why do so many organisations turn a blind-eye to data quality?  One thing for sure is that the legacy data quality software providers have done little to help address this crucial business issue by delivering products that require years of expertise to successfully leverage all of the functionality available (and, just as importantly, to know when to use something else instead).  After a dozen years of working in the field, and having built a highly profitable consultancy business to help clients address this short-fall, I decided a year or so ago to join Datanomic.  I'm delighted to say that, last month, we celebrated the launch of dn:Director, a data quality product that is setting new standards for data quality management in the 21st Century.

I've been privileged to work on data quality projects with many leading, blue-chip companies over the years, but one of the things that struck me was that I was being asked the same questions by clients in 2004 as I was asking myself more than a decade earlier; they were identifying the same old deficiencies in data quality products and having to employ the same workarounds to resolve them.  Sure, the vendors have done something to smarten up the look of their software, but, under the covers sits essentially the same code that was initially developed for mail-room efficiency in the 1980's.

Two more things struck me:

1. All of the software vendors talked about delivering a tool for "business users" but the reality was that just about every project relied on the IT department to develop the business rules.
2. Because of the complexity of using the software to good effect, the cost and duration of projects was prohibitive; the reason I was working with so many blue-chip companies was that they were the only ones that could afford to undertake such major projects!

These were the things that motivated me to create Tranato and subsequently to join Datanomic in 2005 and bring together the two technologies under a shared approach.  Put simply, we feel that a data quality product needs to be much more accessible - you shouldn't need to be a software guru to get value from it.

dn:Director is the result of many years experience in data quality and data management; not just my own, but that of people like Gerry Kelley (Datanomic's VP of Professional Services) and his team, and the shared experiences of our clients and partners.  Taking Datanomic's approach (The Four Cornerstones) and methodology as its foundations, dn:Director has been built from the ground up, using the best-available modern technology.

Developing dn:Director in Java and using standards-based interfaces (such as JDBC, JMS and XML) has enabled us to deliver a technically advanced and extensible data quality product that supports both batch and real-time processes (providing data quality services through SOA).  But the thing that everybody notices first is just how easy it is to use - you should hear what out customers and partners have had to say about it:

"This is great - it's so easy understand and configure business rules"

"I love the way that you can build rules from the data - it's so quick and intuitive"

"This will halve the time it takes to deliver a project"

For more information visit Datanomic's website or call on +44 (0)1223 228400.

Note: I know this is very commercial for a blog entry, but given the amount of personal time, energy (and money) I've committed to making dn:Director a success, I hope you'll forgive me.

Business Intelligence requires the Freshest Ingredients

Business Intelligence systems have, for the most part, been dreary failures. But not in the restaurant industry.  There, the payoffs have been significant.  So what have you been doing wrong?  And what are they doing right?

So says Merideth Levinson in an article for CIO magazine, The Brain Behind The Big, Bad Burger And Other Tales Of Business Intelligence.

The article tells the story of how the burger chain, Hardee's, used BI to identify a gap in the market.  Despite the heightened awareness of healthy eating, Hardee's BI system identified that Americans would have the appetite for a Monster Thickburger, providing more than 1,400 calories and an artery-clogging 107 grammes of fat.  But what caught my attention was the emphasis put on the need for any BI initiative to be underpinned by quality data.

The key to getting accurate insights from BI systems is standard data. "Data quality remains a very overlooked issue in business intelligence, but a massive one," says Gartner's Friedman. "I continue to see failures due to a lack of attention to data quality." Data is the most fundamental component of any BI endeavor. It's the building blocks for insight. Companies have to get their data stores and data warehouses in good working order before they can begin extracting and acting on insights. If not, they'll be operating based on flawed information.