The lead went out to a company. It had been struck off the register two years earlier.
One undeliverable lead led me to sweep 830 directory listings against the commercial register. Sixty-eight of the companies were deleted or in liquidation.
Topic
Data Quality
A collection of 3 issues
The industry column was wrong on two-thirds of the list. I checked every one.
A sales list arrived neatly tagged by industry. Two-thirds of the tags were wrong. Why the confident-looking label is the base rate to distrust — and why AI makes checking cheap, not optional.
The AI handed me a number that was wrong in the most convincing way
An automated tracker booked the pre-discount figure as revenue. Not garbage data, plausible data, which is why it survived. On why judgement, not speed, is the real leverage.