Taking the utmost care with data quality when 'going mobile'

There's a high level of interest across the business world today in "going mobile." Companies have come to realize that with the advent of new technologies like tablets, smartphones and cloud solutions, there's an entirely new level of flexibility and productivity available to them. Employees now find themselves able to save their data easily, share it quickly and access it from anywhere. This should be a major business boon.

Companies and their IT departments have been eager, of late, to adopt new mobility policies designed to give employees a greater level of capability. There's one aspect they may not be considering nearly enough, though: data quality. For businesses that are rapidly moving their data onto new networks and unfamiliar devices, it's important to make sure nothing is lost in translation.

According to IT Business Edge, data quality takes on an entirely new level of significance in the post mobile-era. This principle was highlighted by David Akka, head of Magic Software's UK branch, who drew upon data from Experian's State of Data Quality survey. He noted that 40 percent of companies' core address verification services erode within one year, and that 91 percent of companies overall are suffering from common data quality issues.

"Just as our enterprise integration needs a smart platform that can follow business logic between systems, and enterprise mobility needs to be able to work natively across multiple channels and ecosystems from a single source, data quality also needs a smart solution that can automatically cross-check customer data across multiple systems," Akka said.

All of this goes to show that ensuring data quality needs to be more than just a one-time pursuit. Because data is always eroding, and there are constant concerns about elements being lost in the shuffle, companies need to remain vigilant at all times.