More than a quarter of business data 'inaccurate'

More than 25% of critical data in Fortune 1,000 companies will continue to be inaccurate, incomplete or duplicated for at least the next two years, according to analyst Gartner.

It expects three-quarters of large enterprises will make little to no progress towards improving data quality until 2010. To gain competitive advantage from information, organisations need to identify "data stewards" in the business and manage information as a corporate asset.

Research vice-president Andreas Bitterer said that “dirty data” or poor data quality is an often overlooked business issue and it can have a large negative impact on a business.

“There is not a company on the planet that does not have a data quality problem,” said Bitterer. “And where a company does recognise it has a problem, it often underestimates the size of it.”

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