Claudia Imhoff, President/Founder of Intelligent Solutions, Inc., is a thought leader, visionary practitioner in the rapidly growing fields of business intelligence and customer focused-strategy. Dr. Imhoff founded Intelligent Solution, Inc., a well respected Business Intelligence and CRM consulting and education firm in 1992. Her company has successfully implemented over 150 Corporate Information Factory architectures in all industry areas.

Imhoff poses the question, "Poor Quality Data … Can Your Company Afford the Risk?" Before you can answer that question, you must know the definition … the basics. Often poor-quality data is hard to define. However, inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading data can lead to bad decision making - thus prevailing as "poor data."

During this interview, Imhoff is quick to point out that no company wants poor-quality data, yet many companies continue to use multiple operational systems thus risking multiple entries and truncated information. Incentive programs are prime examples of this risk. Many companies have incentives that are way off base yet cannot fix the incentives until the data meets quality requirements. Without the right data, you only have mistaken analysis erroneous decisions. So why take the risk?

In order to lessen the risk, companies must take a break, so to speak, and clean up their act. Look at incentive packages of employees who handle critical data, improve data through technology and quality tools, cleanse the data so the company has a single view of the business, and insist on accountability.

Companies can't stop functioning to clean up the data. And, when is data good enough? Imhoff answers these questions and more considering the role that data warehousing and technology play in enabling companies to maintain high-quality data and manage strategic customer relationships.