Create measurable business value
Strategy
Large organisations often assume that the value of a dataset increases with its quality. As a result, they invest heavily in completeness, accuracy, lineage, and governance maturity. But quality does not create value. It amplifies value that already exists. Consider contact data, company information, and organisational hierarchies. If a third-
Commercial Value
Data quality has an unusual characteristic: success removes the evidence of the problem. At first, the issues are obvious. Reports disagree. Fields are empty. Three labels describe the same thing. The defects announce themselves. Then a good team goes to work. Definitions become consistent. Pipelines become reliable. Errors disappear. Complaints
Strategy
Every generation believes its defining technology changes the rules of business. Usually, it changes the tools. Today it's AI. Before that it was social media, mobile, the internet, and the personal computer. Each expanded what organizations could do. None changed what organizations ultimately depend on. Every business is
Technology
We often talk about data as if it ages like food. Fresh data is valuable. Old data is stale. But that analogy breaks down surprisingly quickly. Nobody looks at fifty-year-old census records and calls them stale. Economists routinely analyse data collected decades ago. In many cases, its value
Commercial Value
Most data strategies fail for the same reason cities go bankrupt: they try to govern everything. Somewhere, a well-meaning data owner is responsible for 4,000 attributes. Each has a definition, lineage and quality score. The effort is impressive. The economics are less clear. Finance offers a useful clue.