Better data - unchanged process: Data Quality made easy

It is common sense: data quality is a key factor for the success of any business that relies on efficient processes, data-driven decision making, analytics, or artificial intelligence. Poor data quality can lead to inaccurate insights, lost opportunities, wasted resources, and customer dissatisfaction. According to a study by IBM, bad data costs the US economy $3.1 trillion per year. 

Also, common sense: quality always comes at a cost. To minimize this cost, companies across all industries follow the concept of “First Time Right”: perform activities correctly the first time, eliminating the need for rework and waste. In the world of data, members of CDQ’s Data Sharing Community apply this concept successfully: CDQ First Time Right is a cloud-based solution that enhances data quality across sources and systems, and ensures up-to-date, consistent, complete and reliable business partner data right at the very creation of the partners records.  

Yet sometimes operational circumstances call for a different solution that allows for the fastest entry possible while still enhancing data quality.  In this article, we will introduce you to a simple and effective approach to data quality improvement that we call "2^nd time right". This approach does not require you to change your data creation processes, but rather focuses on improving your data after it has been created, using automated and intelligent tools. We will explain how this approach works, what benefits it can bring to your business, and how you can implement it with our cloud-based data quality platform. 

The ideal scenario: First Time Right (FTR) and its benefits 

Originally derived from quality management practices in manufacturing, the First Time Right approach has evolved to become synonymous with achieving operational excellence in numerous fields. Its guiding principle is simple yet transformative: addressing errors at their inception will significantly decrease future expenses and complications:  

• Efficiency and Speed: By eliminating the need for repeated data revisions, processes are expedited, allowing organizations to respond more swiftly to market demands.  
• Cost Reduction: It substantially lowers expenses by minimizing the incidence and severity of errors, which in turn reduces the need for costly corrections.  
• Reliability of Data: Ensuring that data is correct from the outset fosters improved decision-making, enhancing the reliability of business insights. 

For business partner creation we at CDQ would always recommend the First Time Right approach because master data creation is the starting point of any business relationship and sets the path forward for all subsequent business processes.  
 

When creating customer and supplier records, CDQ First Time Right enables a real-time search of business partners in over 70 open and commercial reference data sources. Based on the set of semantical data quality and validation rules, all available information is combined into a Golden Record and can be easily imported into your enterprise workflows. Avoid entry errors and reduce maintenance efforts simply by onboarding your business partners first time right. 

Overruling business requirements: get it second time right 

However, throughout our almost 20 years of accompanying customers towards best-quality master data we have encountered many situations that call for a different approach: 

• Example 1: for the logistics industry, speed is paramount. Although a data creation process with FTR is much faster than without, it may just not be fast enough. The same is true for online shops – a high conversion rate is key, no deal must get lost, and every validation loop bears the risk of annoying the customer.  
• Example 2: a company’s system and data architectures may not be “fit” for FTR. If there is not only one single but multiple systems, in which data is created, the implementation may not be cost efficient.
• Example 3: many companies find themselves in a transition period, e.g.from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA: not all regions or business functions are connected to the new service at the same time. A kind of co-existence may be needed.

Master data requirements for e-busines at Sartorius: 

What is "2^nd time right" and how does it work? 

The idea behind "2^nd time right" is that you don't need to get your data right the first time, as long as you can get it right the second time. This means that instead of trying to prevent errors and inconsistencies from entering your data at the point of creation, you can detect and correct them later, using advanced techniques such as data profiling, matching, deduplication, standardization, enrichment, and verification. 

Benefits of this "2^nd time right" approach are for example: 

• It can be easy and fast to implement, as it does not require you to modify your existing data creation processes or systems. 
• It can be flexible and adaptable, as it can handle different types of data, sources, formats, and quality issues, and adjust to changing business needs and user expectations. 
• It can be unnoticeable and seamless, as it does not affect the performance or experience of the data creators, who can focus on their core tasks, while the data quality improvement is done in the background. 
• It can be effective and comprehensive, as it can detect and correct a wide range of data quality problems, using sophisticated algorithms and rules, and ensure that your data is always up-to-date, consistent, complete, and reliable. 

What are the benefits of "2nd time right" for your business? 

By adopting the "2^nd time right" approach, you can enjoy the following benefits for your business: 

• Improved decision making: You can trust your data to provide accurate and relevant insights for your strategic and operational decisions and avoid costly mistakes or missed opportunities due to faulty or incomplete data. 
• Enhanced customer satisfaction: You can deliver better products and services to your customers, and improve your customer retention and loyalty, by having a complete and consistent view of your customer data, and by providing personalized and timely offers and communications. 
• Increased efficiency and productivity: You can streamline your business processes and workflows, and reduce your operational costs and risks, by eliminating data errors and redundancies, and by automating and optimizing your data quality tasks. 
• Competitive advantage and innovation: You can gain an edge over your competitors, and foster innovation and growth, by leveraging the full potential of your data assets, and by enabling new and advanced analytics and artificial intelligence applications. 

How can you implement "2^nd time right" with our platform? 

Our CDQ Cloud Suite offers the following capabilities, that can be both implemented as one, or step-by-step in a modular approach.  

• Assess your data quality: You can easily and quickly measure and monitor the quality of your data, using various metrics and indicators. You can also identify and prioritize the most critical data quality issues and areas for improvement. This capability can be set up in days, as a harmonized data model and +2600 data quality rules are available out-of-the-box.  
• Cleanse and enrich your data: You can automatically and intelligently fix your data quality problems, using various techniques, such as data profiling, matching, deduplication, standardization, enrichment, and verification. You can also apply custom rules and policies to ensure that your data meets your specific business and regulatory standards. We recommend starting small, with proven and highly automated improvements, still allowing for very use-case specific improvements in the next step.  
• Keep your data up to date: 21% of your data outdates every year. You can receive update signals for your data, filter out the critical ones and propose your business users to change the data before the change hits the process.  

Better data - unchanged process

Data quality is essential for any business that wants to succeed in a data-driven economy. However, improvements can be of lower priority in some specific situations where the need for speed may be more pressing. With our cloud-based data quality platform, you can implement the "2^nd time right" approach and benefit from the best of both worlds: improved data quality at high speed without changing your entire data creation processes.

If you want to learn more about how our platform can help you improve your data quality, please contact us for a free demo or a trial. We will be happy to show you how our platform works, and how it can solve your specific data quality challenges and needs.