by Angela Guess
Loraine Lawson recently reported on the growing understanding among CFOs regarding the need for quality data: “A recent Hackett Group study of CFOs and financial departments shows almost all companies plan to invest in technology this year, especially in the areas of ‘process and information architecture redesign and business intelligences’ analytics technology.’ Seventy-six percent of finance departments said implementing BI/analytics applications would be a top tech priority in the coming year, according to The CFO’s Agenda: Finance’s Top Issues in 2011.”
Lawson continues, “That’s not so unpredictable, but what did surprise me is the report’s finding that more organizations finally realize they must address underlying data issues: Sixty-seven percent identified ‘establish data stewardship, standardize master data and cleanse data’ as a priority.”
Tom Willman, co-author of the report had this to say: “What companies are recognizing is that they’ve thrown lots of money at the applications, but without standardizing and cleansing their data they’re still getting information that doesn’t make sense. They have businesses that are using different definitions, that are calculating metrics differently, that use different hierarchies. This whole concept of master data management is absolutely critical for companies to be able to eventually get to the point where they have predictive analytics.”
