Serving Trinidad and Tobago and the Eastern Caribbean 

The Cost of Bad Business Information

After about two decades of gradual adoption of business systems across sectors, Trinidad and Tobago businesses are discovering the costs of managing their data. The initial benefits of reduced paperwork are now taken for granted–but the information remains, and now the first generation of hardware and software have reached their end of life. When the time comes to upgrade software, replace unsupported versions, move office or expand to a new line of business, how will you move the information without losing the vital business history?

The problems inherent in older methods of handling customer and billing information (“just put it in the system, we will sort it out later”) now become major barriers to getting accurate reports on costs, revenue and inventory. Countless hours of staff time are spent compiling monthly accounts from inconsistent sources. Was it all necessary? No.

“Putting” business information into a system is only the first step. If Step 1 was not managed carefully at the beginning of a system lifecycle, your problems have only grown since then. How to clean out thousands of obsolete records, inconsistent addresses, and invalid stock data now that your databases have grown to millions of records?

Before you make the investment in a new system and migrate old data and old problems, consider whether your data meets the quality standards you need. After all, what was the original reason for investing in expensive licenses and new hardware, if not to make business more efficient? Connect Consulting can help with a review of your data quality, guide a process to cleanse both the information and the processes that led to bad data, and implement a regular internal audit to ensure you go forward with better reporting, based on better information management.

What is “data quality”? TechTarget explains it here.