Managing Data Quality with ERP Systems - Insights from the Insurance Sector

Data quality management (DQM) gains importance due to the increasing amount and diversity of data as well as data's critical impact on organizational success. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which are used in most manufacturing and service organizations, provide a platform for data integration. The information-intensive insurance sector, with its complex products and distribution structure, underlies an unprecedented number of mergers and acquisitions as well as numerous regulations. Despite these specific characteristics and entailed data quality issues, there is a lack of sector-specific research of how ERP systems are used for DQM. We examine ERP systems' use for DQM in the insurance sector by conducting semi-structured expert interviews. This study shows that ERP systems are used for integration after mergers and acquisitions and to fulfill regulations. ERP systems provide a starting point for organization-wide data analysis due to their positive impact on data quality. However, cultural and managerial challenges need to be addressed in research as well as in practice in order to lever the potential of diverse data for analysis. Thus, we present areas for further research and provide guidance for future use of ERP systems in DQM