Approaching IQM Maturity
Recognizing that managing the quality of your data is a first step toward
attaining your business goals and objectives is a fundamental premise in
data management. Implementing an IQM practice and cultivating it to a
mature level across six key service areas will help you maximize the value
you get from your information. We recommend that you invest the time to
assess your own organization’s practices against the Information Quality
Maturity Model to determine how to get started and expand over time.
Where you are in your ability to leverage information for the highest
business impact depends on your information quality maturity level for
managing the quality of that data. These are defined as pillars of
information quality; they define the activity areas that contribute to peakcondition
information. Although many organizations apply some measures
across the different stages of the Information Quality Maturity Model,
these approaches can be minimal, lack consistency, or exist in silos of data
operations, analysis, and business process activities. These deficiencies will
substantially limit the positive impact on the business. To optimize efforts,
we recommend that organizations analyze their existing efforts and
practices within this framework to help establish areas to prioritize,
processes to put in place, and the appropriate technology to automate and
facilitate a true enterprise-wide IQM practice.
The first three pillars, as illustrated in Figure 1, are where most businesses
focus their efforts. As a result, they are only part of the way to achieving a
best practice in aligning peak-condition information to business processes.
To truly harness the value of information, companies need to address the
last three pillars of information quality. Practices around monitoring and
measuring information quality, incorporating mechanisms to crossreference
and confirm data validity, and aligning data to not only be a
product of a process but also to be a driving factor within a process help
ensure that information strategically drives the business.