Iko Instrument Group, a global supplier of measurement, analytical, and monitoring instruments and services based in the Netherlands, had a new data warehouse designed to analyze customer activity to improve service and marketing. However, the data warehouse was full of inaccurate and redundant data. The data in the warehouse came from numerous transaction processing systems in the United States, Europe, Asia, and other locations around the world. The team that designed the warehouse had assumed that sales groups in all these areas would enter customer names, telephone numbers, and addresses the same way. In fact, companies in different countries were using multiple ways of entering quote, billing, shipping, contact information and other data.

Assess the potential business impact of these data quality problems. What decisions have to be made and steps taken to reach a solution?