Don't DRIP: Data Rich, Information Poor

As Steve McNair reports, the daily New York Times now contains more information than the 17th-century man or woman would have encountered in a lifetime. And, on top of that, we are regularly subjected to the DRIP (data rich information free) phenomena.

Excel, PowerPoint, and other programs have easily created a flood of data and often meaningless metrics. More often than not, DRIP makes metrics more complicated than needed.

When drilling down to find the core problems that trigger core transactional problems and the sorts of  inefficiencies that often plague financial institutions, for instance, we very often find ourselves wading through “numbers for numbers’ sake.

And our brains are the same size now as they were then, so crowding it with data and numbers that then have to be reinterpreted just to create sense out of them is very likely displacing important information like spouse’s birthdays and gym locker combinations.

A key takeaway from Mr. McNair’s short article — and a key component of OrboGraph’s image analysis, payment validation, and check recognition technologies — is optimal performance based on useful reporting metrics. Read rates, misread rates, suspect rates, and false negatives are all factored into performance metrics. Ultimately these metrics drive the business value…

• Operational efficiency and quality
• Risk mitigation
• Fraud loss reduction
• Improved regulatory compliance and reporting (AML/KYC/BSA/UCC)
• Big data and marketing improvements

And remember: Forgetting your spouse’s birthday can be disastrous.