UK SMEs Rely On Poor Data

Nearly all of the UK’s mid-sized companies suffer from poor-quality data according to another recent study conducted by IBM.

IBM commissioned independent IT analyst, Quocirca to survey 100 board-level decision makers of mid-market organisations and that all but two admitted to struggling with poor data quality.

Nearly half of respondents (46 percent ) admitted concern about the overall integrity of their information they use to make critical business decisions and two thirds relied on error-prone manual processes to deal with data.

Only seven percent said they constantly monitored key performance indicators (KPIs) and more than two thirds (68 percent) did little to observe or analysis business performance.

Information sharing across the business was also highlighted as an area of concern, where only 13 percent saying they could draw up reports based on a single data source. And over a third (36 percent) of those surveyed either actively prohibited or discouraged data sharing up and down the value chain.

“In a challenging economic climate, organisations need to have confidence in their business decisions and the data that underpins them,” stated Clive Longbottom, service director at Quocirca. “Inaccurate data can trigger huge problems causing critical damage to an organisation.”

He said this sector of UK business had failed to equip themselves with the necessary business intelligence (BI) tools.

“Business intelligence and performance management tools have long been incorrectly viewed as an exclusive enterprise-only club, and this perception has to change,” stated Ged Simmons, IBM business intelligence and performance UK and Ireland country manager.

“A growing number of mid-market businesses are already achieving significant ROI [return on investment] and visibility from BI and PM. In the information age, accurate data is absolutely critical when it comes to making decisions for the future of the business – whatever the size or sector.”