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Good data is good business

This fact is well accepted. So why do we

continue to hear remarks like these..

How we can help

Data Solutions Consulting

We provide consulting for a range of topics around data. These include:

- Data audits

- Data strategy

- Data governance

- Data quality & metrics

- Data science requirements

- People skills development

- Data architecture

- Data portfolio management

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Data management courses

We can do onsite or as remote online courses. Check out our list of available courses or request for one tailored to your needs.

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Guides 

We have a number of guides that we have published over the years and make these available for your use.

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Technical Papers

These are papers presented at various data conferences and they are available for you to download.

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Welcome to Precision DM

Every organisation wants quality data that is reliable, available anytime and easily accessible to use.

The mantra - "right data, right time and to the right person" was already used 30 years ago and yet, with all the advances in technology since then, the industry as a whole still continues to have significant data problems.

One could argue that data quality improvement projects are only carried out in organisations when the need arises, and that these projects are usually successful with respect to their stated goals. Howver, it is common to find that after 6-12 months, the data that was "improved" has again started to degrade in quality.

In the 1990s, much of the theme at oil & gas data management conferences was data quality. Since then, there has been huge advances in technology on so many fronts - database systems, architectures, hosting environments, analytics and AI. And yet, today, data quality improvement papers are still very much in "vogue" although many of the other topics have changed.

Which indicates that solving the data problem and making the solution a sustainable one cannot be done with technology alone. It also requires people and processes.

 

Precision DM - Holistic and Sustainable

We can work with you to develop a solution that is both holistic and sustainable.

"Holistic" simply means that it will aim to address the various contributing factors to data issues in your organisation. Those differ from organisation to organisation and while there will be factors in common, every organisation will have its own particular "flavours" of contributing factors. Some of these factors may already be working well and contributing positively, others may need adjustments or improvements in order to ensure they all work well together.

"Sustainable" is about making the initiative last. Quality data is not a one time requirement. It is ongoing for as long as the business is running. Therefore while we may start out as a quality improvement project, it is imperative that the project aims to make the solution an integral part of the organisation's operations. One of the first requirements for sustainabiity is that the quality of data must be easily visible in a dashboard. The lack of this transparency is the biggest contributor to data issues and mis-information about data in an organisation.

Why data is actually a difficult problem to solve

Data issues if taken in small doses is usually not a very difficult problem to solve. We all have small spreadsheets containing data and we manage them quite successfully. Each spreadsheet we make contains all the information we need for particular tasks. But if we then take several spreadsheets we might have and try to use some of them together, it becomes a little problematic. Now, if we take many people and their many spreadsheets and throw in the requirements that the data in all those spreadsheets needs to be consistent, reliable, available and accesssble, then it is not too difficult to see why data problems are so common. People work with data in their own way generally and, if no structure or discipline are imposed, will continue to do so.