Data quality tool slashes consolidation problems

Companies going through system consolidation or migration, and finding data cleaning and reconciliation problems, could find a tool developed for the utilities and oil and gas sector useful. It’s been used by organisations like Shell and AMEC on plant hand-overs involving verifying millions of data records and 150,000 engineering documents and reference links, detailing everything from valves and pipes, to application codes. AMEC, for example, is now able to gather, clean, store and manage that information incrementally through the various phases of its projects, offering improved information integrity, and dramatically reducing work by a large engineering team. Indeed AMEC reckons it saved around £4.5m and 90—98% of the time otherwise required for data quality management – cutting the cost of offshore oil and gas platform design, construction and operation, while also reducing risk. Now, software developer Datanomic is offering an entry level version at £20,000, instead of the usual £250,000, in a bid to expand its market. “That provides a 12 month licence, and payback is typically in 12 weeks,” says CEO Dr Richard Marsh. “One client got payback during training.” He suggests that fully one third of projects are significantly delayed as a result of data cleaning issues. Some have to scrap data and start again. “Using our tool de-risks projects massively,” he insists. Marsh makes the point that in engineering design and development, data points are highly coded, so prone to error that can go undetected when transferred between systems, as context is lost. Peter Mayhew, information manager of AMEC Oil and Gas, says Datanomic’s software has the flexibility to acquire disparate data in a variety of formats, then audit, clean and combine it so it can be delivered to any requirement. “Datanomic has transformed our business processes. We have radically improved performance, reduced risk, cut time to deliver information and made major savings. We know that dirty data is a problem but we took the strategic view to engineer this out of our processes rather than try a one-off exercise at the end.” “Everyone needs standardisation and consistency,” he says. And that applies equally to CRM and sales systems. “Industry needs a system that understands naming conventions and data formats, and can detect anomalies only for attention.” Speaking at the launch of Datanomic Version 4.1, he added: “There is an urgent need for organisations to be more meticulous and accountable in the way they manage and interpret data. Basic data profiling is not enough; it is just the first step. “By providing an additional level of intelligence and insight to deliver authentic data audit that is more accurate, reliable and ultimately fit for purpose, [we] will deliver additional value.”