Just in time for Halloween when, you thought it was safe to let your guard down . . . terror awaits. Not a conventional scary movie sort of horror, but something infinitely much worse.

You know the drill: at home, late a night, strangely awake and discomfited with your thoughts. The smallest noises are magnified and assume a malevolent air. Is that a branch banging against the gutter? It sounds sinister, like a peg-legged, man ascending the staircase, one slow step at a time – and your bedroom is the first door on the landing.

Transference, that’s the technique you were taught in analysis. Think of something else that could account for the noise, something benign and innocent, not at all evil. Transference, concentrate on something pleasant, mull it over, contemplate it, savor it in your mind – that brings back good feelings, buoys confidence, and banishes bad thoughts.

How good is your data? How well does it meet the requirements of your new ERP system? How much of the cleansing/migration effort can be automated and how much is the business going to have to do manually? Unless you know the answer to these questions it is really hard to plan a data migration project well.

This is why the first phase of a data migration methodology is to profile the data. The tools we prefer to use to do this are normally SAP® Business Objects™ Data Insight and Data Services.

And there it was this week in the news:

“Data issues have caused Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) to freeze foreclosures in 50 states. Worries have developed which suggest that faulty data may be being used to decide the fate of houses, and may be causing some people to be evicted without merit.”

Yet another example of corporate goals and business being disrupted by data errors. Surely actuaries are already calculating the millions of dollars each hour this is causing Bank of America – why? Data.

The USPS has over 220,000 vehicles traveling over 1.2B miles annually (non-contract vehicles). These vehicles make a lot of starts and stops as they traverse our zip codes to deliver to millions of commercial and residential locations nationwide. Each start and stop causes wear and tear on brakes, tires, transmissions, engines, and the people driving the vehicles.

The USPS burns a lot of fuel, emits carbon into the atmosphere, and goes thru a lot of spare parts to keep all those vehicles running and safe for all. The USPS retail storefronts and the sorting and scanning machines require a lot of maintenance and spare parts too. Vast amounts of data, great technology and people are required to keep this hefty eco-system operating at full capacity and healthy.

In Dubai it seems that dwellings used to come above ground and stay above ground with only a one year maintenance contract. Following such it is the owner’s responsibility to find a contractor to carry on the maintenance? If the building erodes, etc…the main builder provides no warranty…is that right? Whose fault is it? Is not the builder’s reputation on the line here? Do we not say later – that the builder has bad quality material? We never say – oh the past owner never maintained the dwelling….time to change that…

Builders need to take a different stance and ensure quality dwellings and maintenance…. The same goes for IT C-level management who think that by getting the latest in ERP solutions and Business Intelligence software that their business user problems are resolved? Are they really? Are they not missing the most important variable in achieving their objective...DATA, DATA, DATA.

It’s a beautiful sunny fall day in Alberta, Canada and I am driving two hours south to visit my son Max in Lethbridge where he is attending University. Max had a birthday this week so my wife and I are making the trip down to have a birthday dinner, and also to fill Max’s refrigerator up with food so he can survive another month of studies on his own.

The drive though southern Alberta can be described as a wide open prairie of farm land and at this time of year the color of the landscape is mainly a golden yellow as farmers are busy working long hours bringing in the grain crops. High quality grain is grown and sold by Canadian farmers and distributed all over the world for food production. Massive farm equipment going through a slow orderly process in these never ending fields can be seen for miles. You can almost feel the sweat and toil that these individuals are enduring on this Saturday morning while most people are enjoying a nice leisurely day off. As I drive along the highway the dusty grain terminals in each small town we pass stand out as local monuments. The grain terminals are where the farmers bring their grain after harvest and it is cleaned, stored and shipped away in railway hoppers to the nearest port.

True story – the past five weeks of travel, hotels, rental cars, and flights have provided some new frustrating insights. As I have continued to try, try, and try again to sign up for a major rental car’s reward points and the long sought for – no lines, immediate access to car keys – I have been thwarted numerous times.

As I went online to sign up for the “VIP” version for this rental car company it asks for two major pieces of information, home address and billing address. Each time, with the appropriate data entered, credit card, insurance coverage options, car size selection – I hit the submit button only to be denied based on an address entered. So with some level of repeated due diligence I have carefully entered both addresses, passwords, etc…and still failing each time.