Business Intelligence with Datanomic
Date:
By: Philip Howard
Classification: White Paper
To err is human. Whenever users need to enter information (such as data, formulae or business rules) into a computer system there is a significant chance that some proportion of whatever is entered will be incorrect, invalid or useless. Moreover, data entry is not the only source of such problems: there are a whole host of other causes, which range from applications that allow users to enter default values or no values at all to database software that has been incorrectly defined.
A recent magazine article in Information Age stated that, “Business Intelligence’s fundamental benefits are clear better, faster, more accurate decision-making”. While one might argue with that statement (in that BI is an enabling technology that supports that aim but does not guarantee it) as a goal it is certainly what relevant vendors are aiming to provide. The question arises, however, as to how good those decisions can be if they are based on erroneous data? To what extent does poor quality data undermine the whole basis of business intelligence?