Death by Data: How much data is too much?

Jenna Trott

5 min read | OCTOBER 14, 2022

Spooky season is here, that means getting frightened by ghosts, goblins and things that go bump in the night. But in reality, there’s really not much that’s scarier than a system flooded with too much data. Why? It can wreak havoc on your business, slow down productivity and even cost you scores of money in errors resulting from inaccurate reporting. And with connected devices projecting to be more than three times the global population by 2023, it’s now easier than ever to collect information. So, how much data is too much data? Here are four signs your business may be collecting too much!

1. Your Business Productivity Has Gone Down

Having too much data can affect your business’s productivity in almost every department, but particularly so for those working in sales. A large percentage of a salesperson’s job is researching a prospecting customer or client which relies on having the right information readily available. However, when a business has too much data, searching for the most useful information can easily turn a task that should take a few minutes into one that takes hours. In a 2018 study that surveyed 1,000 full-time employees from the US about their experience with data manipulation, 49% of employees had difficulty locating documents, 41% found it time consuming to find necessary data on sales, and on average, employees spent 1.8 hours per day searching for and gathering information. And for data analysts? It’s even worse! Forrester research finds that nearly one-third of data analysts waste more than 40% of their work day vetting data before it can be used for strategic decision-making.This creates a significant problem for employees, where trying to pull out the most valuable data is like throwing a net into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and hoping to pull out a fish.

2. Key Decision Making Has Slowed

Your data should tell a story. Picture this: your friend is telling you a story but there’s too many details, names of places, people, things that they did, clothes they were wearing, and statements people said. By the end of it, you’re not actually sure what the story was about. This is what happens when your system is housing far more information than is truly needed; following one piece of data to the next and the next until you’re not really sure what it is you were looking for or why in the first place. Having too much information can cloud judgment, leading to a lack of confidence in decision making, slower response times, and ultimately – missed opportunities. Tracking accurate customer behaviors, interests and trends is essential, if you’re using too much, you run the risk of ineffective data leading to ineffective business strategies.

3. You’re Making Unexpected Expenses

As a result of lower productivity, poor decision making, and system failures due to the inability to house so much data, businesses tend to compensate by spending more money to fix these issues. And the financial implications of too much bad data? According to a survey conducted by Gartner, it can cost the average organization around $15 million per year in losses. Bad data equals bad business; it really is that simple.