How to know if you can trust your reports
You do not need to be technical to demand reliable data. These are the warning signs, the questions to ask your team and the few quality indicators leadership should see every month.
5 warning signs
If you recognise two or more in your company, data quality is already costing you money and decision time.
Every area brings its own figure
In the meeting, sales, finance and operations present different numbers for the same thing, and time goes on arguing which one is right.
Ask your team:Do we have a single, written definition of our key indicators?
Nobody knows who answers for a piece of data
When data is wrong, IT says it is a business matter and the business says it is IT’s.
Ask your team:Who is accountable for customer, product and supplier data?
Reports arrive late or get redone
Decisions are made on last month’s data, or the report changes after it has been presented.
Ask your team:How many days does it take to have closed figures, and how often do we correct them?
Many hours in Excel to “make it add up”
Skilled people spend days copying, pasting and reconciling by hand. It is a cost that appears in no budget.
Ask your team:How many hours a month do we spend preparing and reconciling reports?
AI projects that do not deliver
Pilots that work in the demo and fail on real data. And the AI Act requires governance of the data used by high-risk AI systems.
Ask your team:Do we know which data each AI project uses, and how good it is?
Recognise any of these?
Measure your area with the free checklist: 20 checks with automatic scoring.
Download the checklist →The data quality dashboard for leadership
Eight indicators that fit on one slide in the monthly meeting. Thresholds are a starting point: adjust them to your company.
| Indicator | How it is calculated | Starting threshold |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of critical data | Rules passed ÷ rules evaluated on critical data | above 95% and rising |
| Critical data with an owner | Critical data with an assigned owner ÷ critical data | 100% |
| Indicators with a written definition | Key indicators with an approved definition ÷ key indicators | 100% |
| Issues resolved on time | Issues resolved within the agreed time ÷ resolved | above 90% |
| Reports corrected after presentation | Reports reissued ÷ reports issued | 0% |
| AI projects with assessed data | Projects with a quality assessment of their data ÷ AI projects | 100% |
| Open data issues | Number of open issues and their average age | going down |
| Days to closed figures | Working days from month end | going down |
Where to start, in three steps
Each step links to the guide and, where there is one, to the ready-made template.
Decide which data matters
List the 10 to 15 pieces of data your decisions depend on (critical data) and ask the team to fill in the free checklist.
Give every piece of data an owner
Assign a business owner to each critical data element and approve a single definition of the key indicators.
Look at the dashboard every month
Bring four or five quality indicators to the monthly leadership meeting. What gets reviewed every month improves.
Frequently asked questions
How much does poor data quality cost?
It depends on each company, and it is worth calculating with your own numbers: hours spent reconciling reports, billing errors, duplicate payments or opportunities lost to wrong contact details. That figure is usually the best argument for investing.
Who should lead data quality?
Leadership sponsors it and each business area answers for its own data. IT provides tools and technical support, but cannot decide whether a sales or finance figure is correct.
Do we need full data governance to start?
No. It is enough to identify critical data, give it owners, measure a few rules and review the results every month. The rest is added once that works.
What does the AI Act require about data?
For high-risk AI systems, Article 10 requires governance practices for training, validation and test data. Even if your company has no high-risk systems, data quality still decides whether AI works.
Where does your data governance stand?
The free assessment tells you what to prioritise in five minutes.