Data that is entered never goes away....
I thought no one would see it. Opps...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 by iNautilus | Discussion: Industry
1. The "Dear Idiot" letter Be careful where you get your data – it may come back to haunt you. This tale of terror comes from the customer call center of a large financial services institution. As in nearly all help desks, service reps take calls and enter customer information into a shared database.
This particular database had a salutation field that was editable. Instead of being constrained to Mr., Ms., Dr., etc., the field could accept 20 or 30 characters of whatever the rep typed. As service reps listened to the complaints of angry customers, some of them began adding their own, not entirely kind, notes to each record, like, "what an idiot this customer is."
This went on for years. No one noticed because no other system in the organization pulled data from that salutation field. Then, one day, the marketing department decided to launch a direct mail campaign to promote a new product. They came up with a brilliant idea. Instead of purchasing a list, why not use the service desk database?
So the letters went out: "Dear Idiot Customer John Smith."
Strangely, no customers signed up for the new service. It wasn't until the organization began examining its outgoing mail that it figured out why. The moral of this story?
"We don't own our data any more," says Arvind Parthasarathi, vice president of product management and data quality for data integration specialists Informatica. "The world is so interconnected that it's likely someone will pick up your information and use it in a way you never anticipated. Because you're pulling data from everywhere, you need to make sure you have the right level of data quality management before you use it for anything new."
What constitutes the "right level" will vary depending on how you use the data. "In the direct mail industry, getting 70 to 80 percent of your data correct is probably good enough," he adds. "In the pharmaceutical industry, you want to be at 99 percent or better. But no company really wants, needs, or will pay for perfect data; it's just too expensive. The issue always is, how will it be used and at what point is it good enough?"
Dan Tynan is contributing editor at InfoWorldhttp://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/29/44FE-dirty-data_1.html
Reply #2 Tuesday, October 30, 2007 9:15 AM
Reply #3 Tuesday, October 30, 2007 9:45 AM
Zubaz packs his bags for Hell.
Reply #4 Wednesday, October 31, 2007 7:27 PM
Well now it's unlikely you're going to the other place....blasphemy is a serious offense in heaven. I mean, just ask your local priest if it's not a 'do not pass go, do not collect a halo or wings at the door, but take the elevator directly to Hell' demotion.
Sadly, not enough people take this seriously enough until they get there and it's too late....then some get off the elevator before it reaches its destination, meaning they're destined to inhabit a plane of existence that is neither here or there...why sometimes we hear things that go bump in the night.
Reply #5 Wednesday, October 31, 2007 10:13 PM
Reply #6 Thursday, November 1, 2007 5:30 AM
Reply #7 Thursday, November 1, 2007 8:45 AM
I've kept a bag packed for 40yrs
Reply #8 Thursday, November 1, 2007 9:35 AM
Then they would not have to have so much excess data lying around aka bags.
Reply #9 Sunday, November 11, 2007 8:46 PM
I've kept a bag packed for 40yrs
yeah well i lost mine when i arrived!
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Reply #1 Tuesday, October 30, 2007 6:51 AM
When you need the data; it will be gone.
When you wish it would be gone, there it is.