In 1990 the Virginia based bank “Signet Bank” decided to trust two smart people, Richard Fairbanks and Nigel Morris, and make a major investment into data. They decided to turn the customer credit department into a large laboratory, “testing” out different kinds of credit terms on different credit taker characteristics and thus collected data for years.
This was a huge investment, and the department “lost money” for quite some time. But what they were really doing was acquiring data, not just because they thought it’s a good investment, what Fairbanks and Morris collected was Good Data. Data integrated into a good data strategy aligned with the company strategy.
They collected data with the clear focus of improving the decision making capability of the credit department of Signet Bank.
Good data is just that. Good data is what you have with a good data strategy. It is data you collect, clean/enrich/transform, make insightful, with the sole goal of improving decision making.
The problem only is, out there is a lot of Bad Data! You will see bad data everywhere you go. It is data touched for any other reason, without having a larger goal in mind.
