It's absolutely part of the process... just not something companies always realize they're signing up for, or the degree to which they are, when they initiate p

It's absolutely part of the process... just not something companies always realize they're signing up for, or the degree to which they are, when they initiate projects. One problem is that the cost of cleaning it up can easily exceed the cost of, and benefit from, the work they planned on doing with the data. Another is that sometimes it's a mess (structurally or the company failed to record key data at point of collection that can't be determined after the fact etc.) to the point of being useless in terms of being able to glean meaningful insight from it. Several of the Data Warehousing projects I've dealt with could be better described as Data Landfills. One can't just dump data into a hole for years, let it rot, and expect goodness when you go back to look at it.