But consultants say such an arrangement is a big mistake. They note that finance departments can monitor the quality and credibility of data going into a warehouse, ensuring that measurements and definitions are standardized. Dell's Stevens agrees. Other departments love that finance worries about data quality so much. Experts say the quality of data is the single most important factor in the success of a data mining operation.
Good data helps companies make informed, strategically sound decisions.
Bad data usually leads to complete cave-ins. One reason for the high failure rate is that companies simply ignore the importance of good information. Instead, they try to cut costs by skimping on the extracting, cleaning and integrating of data. The impulse in understandable - data gathering, cleaning and integration usually make up about 70 percent of the total cost of a data warehouse project. But once corrupted data enters the warehouse, all bets are off.