Claim and reality

The Data quality in ERP-applications often shows a considerable need for optimization.

One of the main reasons for this is that there is often a lack of a clear Quality management and there is a lack of appropriate tool support.

According to a study by Omikron Data Quality, unclear responsibilities are also among the typical causes in practice. For the study, more than 200 ERP-managers and executives from companies with a turnover of more than 50 million euros were surveyed.

According to the results, three out of five companies surveyed Data quality at ERP-environment as important, while only 13 percent consider it to be of minor importance; at the same time, however, almost half admit that they largely lack systematic data quality management.

For a further third, such a Management only exists to a limited extent. This means that only one in five companies has a clear strategic Positioning.

"This shows that Data quality with the ERP-applications is often just lip service"

problematizes Omikron Managing Director Carsten Kraus the results of the study.

This assessment is also confirmed by the answers to the question of whether the actual status in the Data quality meets the requirements. This is only the case for business applications in a third of the companies, while 29 percent note certain deviations and the majority of respondents (39 percent) even report major discrepancies.

One of the reasons for this could be that the responsibilities with regard to the Data quality are usually regulated differently. Often it is the ERP-users themselves, who have to take care of this, although they often lack defined specifications.

In every fourth case, this function is the responsibility of the process owners, while special organizational areas such as a staff unit for Data quality are practically nowhere to be found in companies.

In addition to the unclear responsibilities and the vague strategic Positioning However, the companies also cite other reasons why Data quality often does not work so well. In the opinion of the ERP-Users particularly criticized the lack of tool support and - presumably as a result - weaknesses on the user side.

Carsten Kraus therefore sees the combination of inadequate quality specifications, unclear responsibilities and a lack of technical support as a problematic situation that companies must address.

"The calculation cannot work out if you ERP-users with this task, but they are neither provided with a clearly defined quality orientation nor with the necessary tools to maintain the Data quality be equipped"

he points to a significant contradiction. In his view, the use of software solutions for operational management alone could already help companies to achieve their goals. Quality management take a big step forward.

This is because the majority of them cite automatic correction of postal errors as a technically supported functional aid for significant improvements. Error and the duplicate check.

More than half of those surveyed also consider an error-tolerant search to be very helpful, which also allows incorrectly and/or incompletely spelled terms or data records to be found quickly.