7. Accuracy of information

The reason for having information in the first place is to be able to make good and valid decisions.

If information is inaccurate, then it is very likely to lead to poor or downright wrong decisions being made.

For example, imagine that a company has a sales outlet in a distant market. Every week they send in their sales figures to central headquarters - but a new employee is hired and makes a mistake - instead of sending sales figure of 300, she sends sales of 30.

As you can imagine, this would very rapidly set off management alarm bells in HQ so the local manager could expect a very tough phone call from central office!
		And woe betide the new employee for sending inaccurate information in the first place!

This extreme change in data is very easy to spot - but it is the subtle inaccuracies that really cause a problem - for example if the employee sent 295 instead of 300. This is far more difficult to spot and yet even this level of inaccuracy may have an effect somewhere in the company - for example re-ordering new stock may be wrong.

These are some typical problems of inaccurate data and their cause:

Can you think of other problems with inaccurate information?