BUSINESS MANAGEMENT MASTER CLASS SERIES

Database Quality Master Class

Most of us have them and we’re all on them! Databases are the foundations of

good customer relationship management and also a major cause of customer

complaint. Given the importance of good databases it is interesting to note that

many organisations do not substantially invest in database validity. By way of

example a recent Audit Commission report found that the NHS spends around

£100m a year on patients on GP lists that have moved or died. Surgeries were

informed in no uncertain terms that they must clean up their databases or face

hefty fines.

This follows on from changes to data protection legislation further regulating how

databases are managed and increasing the rights of individuals at home and at

work. We also now have the Mailing Preference Scheme and Telephone

Preference Scheme – if you mail or phone people on these lists you could face a

fine.

We now live in a database aware society where an individual’s presence within

databases has almost become an extension of them as human beings. For many

people if you abuse their database persona you are attacking them as

individuals. Because of this database validity has become a big issue for

consumers and businesses alike.

What is Database Validity?

Broadly speaking there are two types of database validity: technical and

semantic.

Technical validity

Technical validity refers to cleanliness issues typically taken care of by technical

database administrators. Within this category we have key integrity (keys tell the

database management systems how to link records together), record duplication

(within a single database and organisation wide), stranded data due to poor

deletion / merging (e.g. a contact is deleted but not their address when no other

record shares that address), invalid lookup values e.g. following a change to the

user interface, data corruption, poor application design, change in one database

not reflected in others and a variety of other essentially technical issues.

© Neuro Innovation 2004

Page 1

10/11/2005