IT contractors can convince firms to prioritise the improvement of their data quality by pointing out how the issue affects business.

Poor data quality can lead to bad management decisions, due to miscalculated statistics and risk, according to the founder and editor of Data Quality Pro Dylan Jones.

IT contractors can convince firms of this by finding an example of how this poor data quality affects the bottom line, Mr Jones explains.

From then on it is a case of revealing how improved data can give a better picture of company finances and risk and thus more intelligent decisions.

"Over time, typically several years, you aim to develop a data quality culture so that all this becomes second nature at every level of the organisation," Mr Jones concluded.

The job of ensuring data quality is often seen as the sole responsibility of data management professionals in the IT department, rather than other specific areas of the business using the data, according to the latest research from SearchDataManagement.com.