Just to let you know that the Information Difference has released its first piece of primary market research, as reported by IT Pro. There are some intriguing snippets in the survey results, as well as some rather more expected results, or the “well, duh” results as Homer Simpson might say.

13% of the (mostly larger) 112 companies surveyed had over 100 systems that hold and maintain customer data, which gives some idea of the scale of the problem that MDM is tackling. It is bit more than “just put in a hub” when you have systems at this level of complexity.

Given the generally flaky level of data quality reported, I found it surprising that nearly a third of the companies in the survey had not purchased an automated data quality tool.

The good thing was that plenty of companies seem to have begin measuring the costs of poor master data, and those costs are high, which should make it easier to justify master data management initiatives.