Poor data management costs UK firms £8bn

UK firms are losing out on more than £8bn in revenue owing to bad management of their data, according to research released today.

Software vendor Experian QAS surveyed more than 1,300 IT decision-makers in seven countries - 303 of which were from the UK - and found that only 44 per cent of UK businesses are investing in data quality effectively and generating revenue as a direct result.

According to the firm, the potential revenue lost would be delivered through a better understanding of who and where customers and prospects are, ensuring better-quality sales leads, encouraging longer-term customer relationships and prompting repeat purchases.

It claims that if UK organisations with more than 250 employees fully harnessed the revenue-generating potential of their data by better managing information, the total financial boost to the UK private sector would be at least £8bn.

For an individual organisation, better management of data could improve the bottom line by between £431,000 and £9.3m over two years, depending on the size of the organisation, the research also showed.