ACCA Strategic Professional · Advanced Performance Management · Management reports
Tarsen Foods is building a dashboard from its sales ledger, a warehouse system and an external market-research feed. The management accountant finds the same customer recorded under three different names and regional sales coded to different territories in each source. The dashboard will compare regional profitability. Which action BEST addresses the issue before the dashboard is relied upon?
The best action is to cleanse the data and agree common master data definitions across the sources. The issue is duplicated customers and inconsistent territory coding, which undermines accuracy and comparability. Faster refreshes, extra sources or better charts would not fix the underlying inconsistency.
- AIncrease the refresh frequency of the dashboard to real time
- BApply data cleansing and agree common master data definitions across the sourcesCorrect
- CAdd more external data sources to dilute the inconsistencies
- DReplace numerical tables on the dashboard with graphical displays
Explanation
The problem is inconsistent and duplicated data, which is a data quality and governance issue. Cleansing and common master data definitions fix it at source. Faster refresh, more sources or better visuals do not correct duplication or coding mismatches and could magnify the errors.
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