A system is as good as its data

I have worked with many users of ERP including SAP. These users are sometimes data entry operators and some times they are senior managers. No matter in what industry or position they are in they have a common problem. They always find the system is wrong and it is not providing the information they are looking for. Some really question the cost put into the system and they do not get return on investment.

Can any system be wrong? Of cause it can be. In that case it is a fundamental problem with the system they use. The system is unable to process its data accurately. If this is the case I don’t think there will be much of a question of throwing the system away. But is this the scenario most of the times?

According to my knowledge we find errors in the systems very rarely. But we find erroneous data entered into the system regularly. This leads to wrong outputs. Managers will not see the real picture of the business just by looking at the system. In this scenario the system can do only very little to help other than validating inputs and some basic and predetermined checks. For an example the system would identify if some one enters “ABC” in a numeric input and throw an error. But it can not stop one entering 11 instead of 1.

User discipline and understanding are keys to the success of any system. For me data is never 99% accurate. Either it is not accurate or data is fully accurate. So think twice when you use the term “System Issue”. It is “your issue” most of the times.