There was a time when data management could be found somewhere in the middle of a company financial director’s priority list (or even lower!). Not anymore, according to a study carried out by the Hackett Group (global leader in process benchmarking and business transformation).
The study reveals that an increasing number of company chief financial directors and finance departments worldwide are finally recognising the importance of enhanced data quality and accuracy – something that has been long overdue.
All this means greater investment in data management (particularly in the realm of process and information architecture redesign) is expected this year, and in the future. In fact, investment has already begun…
Tom Willman, practice leader with Hackett’s enterprise performance management executive advisory program, and co-author of the study, suggested to Business Finance that: “The forecasting job has gotten much more difficult, and businesses haven’t gotten any better at it. But the results of our study show that almost universally companies are looking at how to drive improvements in the accuracy of the process.”
So how exactly do you ‘drive improvements’ to make forecasts more precise? Well, 67 per cent of businesses surveyed who plan to invest more in improving their data management think they know the answer: 1) ensure data stewardship is firmly established, 2) standardise your master data, and 3) cleanse your information.
That’s it? The recipe, no, the ‘winning formula’ for achieving precise forecasts with a capital P?
Well, not quite.
Let’s give the last word to Andrew White, research vice president at Gartner, who told ITbusinessedge.com that a master data management system is “intertwined with improvements in data quality and data governance” – something we at Evaxyx are rather good at.
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