Achieve data quality starting with data profiling and ending at data validation. You need data that is accurate, data that is reliable, data that is validated before you can use it as business intelligence or analytics.
Data profiling is a crucial part of data conversion, migration and data quality projects. In fact, it is the first step in understanding the scope and nature of data problems in a new data project or plan. Despite its importance, data profiling is rarely seen on project plans and almost definitely never seen as a line item in the budget. That’s because most companies use consultants who profile it AFTER a data consultant encounters issues with the client’s system or data preventing a successful outcome to the migration or integration effort. Data profiling is the first step to data validation.
Data profiling saves you from future roadblocks and mishaps during a crucial migration or integration process. More importantly, it helps business stakeholders be aware of the challenges ahead. Armed with information on issues to target, businesses can accurately plan the costs and the time needed to achieve their data goals.
Another key benefit of data profiling is its role in the making of strategic business decisions. When data is used for analysis, decision-making, research or reporting, it needs to be done right – in fact, you need data validation before you can make effective use of data. Because data profiling gives an overview of data quality issues within the data source, it prevents businesses from making inaccurate statistical analysis or reporting with flawed data.
Ideally, data profiling should be done BEFORE any other task. A profiling exercise must be easy, quick, inexpensive and done using specialized tools that result in a concise profile report, pinpointing data issues that MUST be addressed. The result of this exercise is a more rationally planned migration or integration project, with a more realistic budget and fewer assumptions leading to an extensive scope later.
The profile report will have quantified data issues plaguing a data source and enables a more comprehensive approach to master data management, governance, data cleansing, matching, deduplication and more. Effective data quality assessment and data profiling tools take your data through a complete life cycle process – from data profiling, to data cleansing, to data matching and finally to data validation. The end purpose being to give you data you can use with confidence.
Data Ladder’s DataMatch Enterprise offers one of the easiest to use data profiling tools in the market. It quickly provides enough metadata to construct a cogent profile analysis of data quality and quantifies the scope and depth of necessary add-ons to make the project successful. Once it does the profiling, it proceeds to perform data matching, cleansing, deduplication and standardization, finally achieving data validation.
The greatest benefit of using Data Ladder is the ability to clean data in the very tool/system that the organization is using to store data. Data Ladder allows for easy integration with over 150+ platforms letting businesses profile, clean and dedupe data directly on their data source. Once businesses sets the master identity management and data quality process in place, they can use Data Ladder to handle ongoing everyday matching and maintenance needs.
Data Ladder’s data profile software is an automated commercial solution that does not require the need to learn or possess any specific talent or skill. Manual data profiling is an expensive and time-consuming procedure that takes months, especially if you have large volumes of data. Collect descriptive statistics (min, max mean), perform quality assessment, discover metadata issues and identify functional dependencies between keys within just a matter of minutes. You don’t need extra staff, data experts or any computational algorithm development to get this job done.
Valid or invalid characters in your identifier fields
Non-printable characters that often get overlooked
Punctuation in addresses or zip codes that deteriorate quality
And Much More
Get an overview of the problems plaguing your data
Save on time, money and the need to hire additional talent
Set realistic budgets with a more focused data transformation plan
Data is the most important asset in our information-based economy, with enterprise data spread across 65 systems on average. A greater variety of data sources, as well as better information-tracking, means businesses now have more data than ever before, but it is also dirtier than ever before. Data profiling tools can eliminate many common human errors, such as incorrect spelling, improper formatting, or missing zip codes. The result is higher operational efficiency and fewer wasted resources.
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