With all that has been written and said about data preparation, you are probably convinced your enterprise is ready to take advantage of its ability to rapidly transform inconsistent, incomplete, and inaccurate data into the clean, complete and ready-to-use data that your analytics require. This cleaned up version of data can help inform business decisions as well as achieve business and IT leaders' efficiency, cost, and risk mandates.

I'm sure you would agree data preparation is a powerful and strategic resource with multiple benefits. So now the only question is who buys the data preparation solution for your enterprise?

The Ideal Buying Team

While there's not a 100 percent right answer to the question above, it seems the most successful adopters select and purchase their data preparation tools collaboratively with representatives from both the business and IT sides of their organizations.  

Teaming ensures that everyone's voice is heard and collective objectives are met. It avoids false starts that might occur when someone goes it alone. Nothing can be as frustrating as finding out after the fact the tool selected lacks key capabilities, is too IT-oriented for business analysts to use, or doesn't scale to meet your data volume and performance requirements.

Round Up, then Skill Up Your Team 

Who will be on your data preparation buying team? Give this some serious thought. What may prove helpful to you is to create a table to assist you in identifying and selecting ideal team members from your company. For your convenience, I've added a downloadable buyer's template you can use to simplify this process.

Once you've determined who you need on your buying team, it's time to bring them on board. To skill them up, relook at my earlier blogs as they provide both direct insights as well as indirect links to rich data preparation content sources.

• Is Now the Time to Adopt Data Preparation? Analysts Say Yes!
• Win -Win: Enterprise-Grade Data Preparation for Business and IT
• Drowning in Data: Data Preparation to the Rescue
• Data Preparation Plus Data Governance Equals Better Analysis
• Self-service Data Preparation Made Better with Data Virtualization