Is it Broccoli? Or, Broccolli?* How 1 of your 5-a-day could derail your IT transformation project.

The answer is broccoli. That's, two c’s, one l, and one i. Spell it incorrectly on your weekly shopping list and you’ll still find it in the supermarket because you can identify it visually. But your IT system can’t.

Artificial intelligence applications such as business process automation and predictive data modelling are creating a generational shift in data management. But data entry for most businesses is still a manual process. State-of-the-art facial recognition systems are replacing clocking-in cards and fingerprint IDs for shift work. Input the wrong information to match the technically advanced facial recognition and someone won’t get paid accurately.

Payroll errors can usually be easily identified and corrected. A much bigger problem is cleansing unknown errors in company-wide data. To put this in perspective, 1Gb can store about 166,000 Excel spreadsheet pages**. How long would it take to confirm the accuracy of that amount of data?

Unidentified data errors create major problems in IT upgrades, project implementation and systems migration. They mean additional man-hours spent solving unexpected problems; missed deadlines; and increased costs. Worse still, unidentified data errors can create serious miscalculations in stock management, resource planning, supplier and customer relationships and financial planning. Data, in all its forms, will define the future of your business. You must be able to trust the data. So:

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1. Appoint a Data Tsar to create, implement and manage an overall data strategy.

2. Regularly communicate the importance of accurate data entry. It must be right.

3. Cleanse incorrect data. The future of your business might depend on it.

4. Create and enforce data entry protocols governing how data should be formatted and entered into company systems.

5. Set up a Data Management Team to ensure data quality is maintained going forwards.

 

If you think your business is too new, too old, too big or too small to worry about data accuracy, think again. Deloitte, in its 2025 Financial Predictions, puts it like this: “Standardized, high-quality data will become even more important, as data is the foundation for business insights, automation, and touchless operations.” And don’t wait for AI to fix you data management problems. An AI system based on faulty data will still be a faulty AI enabled system.

 

*This article was inspired by a real-life stock management system that used seven different spellings of ‘broccoli’. Not a problem on your shopping list. Chaos in stock management. 
**Lexisnexis

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