Data Quality Issues in Integrated Enterprise Systems

In this paper, we explore the effects of Enterprise Systems, such as SAP, on the quality of organizational data. Our findings are based on a longitudinal study of an ES implementation at multiple sites in one global organization. We organize the results in terms of how the ES implementation changed Intrinsic data quality, Representational data quality, Contextual data quality, and Accessibility data quality (Wang and Strong, 1996). Our findings indicate improved data quality in all these categories, but the improvements were at a global level. At the local level of a particular functional area, the quality of data, in terms of its “fitness for use”, might decrease.