Businesses can gain a competitive advantage from the quality of their data due to the close relationship between it and customer satisfaction, according to one commentator, which may interest IT contractors and freelancers.

Dylan Jones, founder and editor of Data Quality Pro, said that poor quality data invariably leads to inefficient internal and external services, meaning that more and more businesses are looking to improve their systems.

"There are literally scores of ways poor data quality can emerge," he went on to say.

"However, there is one constant - organisations that fail to implement a data quality management strategy are guaranteed to experience degradation of data quality."

The comments follow research by Gartner, which found that IT contractors are likely to be focusing on data quality applications this year as one of the most sought-after types of enterprise software.

Additionally, a study by Datactics found last month that there is a knowledge gap among senior management about the real condition of data on many organisations' systems.