I'm frequently asked: "What causes poor data quality?" There are, of course, many culprits: Lack of a data culture. Poor management attitude. Insufficient training. Incorrect reward structure. But there is one reason that is common to all organizations – poor data architecture.

Many data quality issues are a result of the distance separating data from the real-world object or entity it attempts to describe. This is the case with master data, which describes parties, products, locations and assets. Customer (one of the roles within party) master data quality issues are rife with examples, especially