Data Quality Management
Background
A global pharmaceutical company was experiencing data quality issues in monthly summary reports, which became apparent during business division benchmarking. The inconsistency of data undermined the confidence of leaders in the reliability of the reporting.
Solution
The root cause was traced to human error when entering meeting profile, budget and RFP information in the meeting software, and so it was decided to implement an assurance system to monitor data entry quality, and catch the dozens of errors per week before they showed on reporting.
Outcome
A middleware solution was identified and implemented. The system evaluated every data entry field for completeness, reasonableness, typos, empty fields, approvals received, proper dates, and locations. It then sent emails to meeting planners and sourcing specialists with a list of exceptions, and the staff had five business days to fix all errors. Within weeks the error rate drop to a manageable level, and within the month the problem was resolved.