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It's interesting that the lack of this data was one of the failure points for Target's $4.4 billion USD Canadian expansion that ended in failure. It's a really

It's interesting that the lack of this data was one of the failure points for Target's $4.4 billion USD Canadian expansion that ended in failure. It's a really interesting story [0] > A team assigned to investigate the problem discovered an astounding number of errors. Product dimensions would be in inches, not centimetres or entered in the wrong order: width by height by length, instead of, say, length by width by height. Sometimes the wrong currency was used. Item descriptions were vague. Important information was missing. There were myriad typos. “You name it, it was wrong,” says a former employee. “It was a disaster.” > Getting the details from suppliers largely fell on the young merchandising assistants. In the industry, information from vendors is notoriously unreliable, but merchandising assistants were often not experienced enough to challenge vendors on the accuracy of the product information they provided. > The investigative team estimated information in the system was accurate about 30% of the time. [0] Source: http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/what-really-happened-at-target-canada-the-retailers-last-days/ http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/what-really-happened...

PakG1 9y ago
Quality of data is probably one of the saddest reasons why systems can be unreliable and bad decisions can be easily made in many organizations that aren't technically oriented. It's the biggest reason why I think data analysis logic and/or data modeling should somehow be incorporated into public high school curriculum plans. Systems will work better when the people who use them have a better appreciation for caring about the quality of their data and also the nature of data relationships in databases. This is completely separate from the concepts taught in programming classes, but of course related. Better understanding of the nature of data -> better data -> more useful systems -> better business decisions -> better business performance. I see too many people get frustrated and make poor decisions because they are unable to comprehend the nature of data. Productivity would soar if people understood how to model and take care of data. It's only one aspect of a complex issue, of course. Good UI, system uptime reliability, and so many other things also matter for whether an organization gets everything it really needs from a system.
froindt 9y ago
Thank you for posting the story. I hadn't heard about it previously. Having spent a couple years at various businesses, getting accurate data and understanding exactly what you're looking at is more of a pain than I would have ever imagined.

PakG1 9y ago

Quality of data is probably one of the saddest reasons why systems can be unreliable and bad decisions can be easily made in many organizations that aren't technically oriented. It's the biggest reason why I think data analysis logic and/or data modeling should somehow be incorporated into public high school curriculum plans. Systems will work better when the people who use them have a better appreciation for caring about the quality of their data and also the nature of data relationships in databases. This is completely separate from the concepts taught in programming classes, but of course related. Better understanding of the nature of data -> better data -> more useful systems -> better business decisions -> better business performance. I see too many people get frustrated and make poor decisions because they are unable to comprehend the nature of data. Productivity would soar if people understood how to model and take care of data. It's only one aspect of a complex issue, of course. Good UI, system uptime reliability, and so many other things also matter for whether an organization gets everything it really needs from a system.

froindt 9y ago

Thank you for posting the story. I hadn't heard about it previously. Having spent a couple years at various businesses, getting accurate data and understanding exactly what you're looking at is more of a pain than I would have ever imagined.