Coursing through the electronic veins of organizations around the globe are critical pieces of information—whether they be about customers, products, inventories, or transactions. While the vast majority of enterprises spend months and even years determining which computer hardware, networking, and enterprise software solutions will help them grow their businesses, few pay attention to the data that will support their investments in these systems.

 In order to fully realize the benefits of their investments in enterprise computing systems, organizations must have a detailed understanding of the quality of their data—how to clean it, and how to keep it clean. And those organizations that approach this issue strategically are those that will be successful. But what goes into a data quality strategy? This paper from Business Objects, an SAP company, explores strategy in the context of data quality.