More access to information – more mistakes

We have easy access to mountains of business information, we have computers, data bases, statistics, websites, blogs and 24 hour a day news channels.

Has this made our life and decision-making easier and more accurate? No. According to management-issues in an article entitled Paying the Price for Flawed Data (Link), we are making serious mistakes based on inaccurate or inappropriate data.

A quote from the article:

“A survey of workers in the U.S., Great Britain, France, and Germany carried out for business intelligence solutions provider, Business Objects, claims that the widespread use of faulty business data is a dirty little secret in today’s business world but is going largely unnoticed by businesses.

It found that almost three-quarters of information workers admitted to having made business decisions that later turned out to be wrong due to incorrect, incomplete, or contradictory business data or information.

Compounding this, only about one in 10 information workers said they always have all the information they need to confidently make business decisions.” (Link)

It’s not about collecting mountains of information, it’s about questioning what we wish to know, and then selecting and collecting the information that will help us find the answers.

What do you want to know?

Where can you get the correct information?

How do you know you have the correct data?

Related Links:

How much time do you spend with statistics (Link)

How to set up a beginner’s business intelligence system (Link)

Was Peter Drucker right? Is it all about attitude? (Link)