Data Quality Whitepapers are Worthless

During a 1609 interview, William Shakespeare was asked his opinion about an emerging genre of theatrical writing known as Data Quality Whitepapers.  The "Bard of Avon" was clearly not a fan.  His famously satirical response was:

Data quality's but a writing shadow, a poor paper

That struts and frets its words upon the page

And then is heard no more:  it is a tale

Told by a vendor, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

Four centuries later, I find myself in complete agreement with Shakespeare (and not just because Harold Bloom told me so).

Today is April Fool's Day, but I am not joking around - call Dennis Miller and Lewis Black - because I am ready to RANT.

I am sick and tired of reading whitepapers.  Here is my "Bottom Ten List" explaining why: 

1. Ones that make me fill out a "please mercilessly spam me later" contact information form before I am allowed to download them remind me of Mrs. Bun: "I DON'T LIKE SPAM!"
2. Ones that after I read their supposed pearls of wisdom, make me shake my laptop violently like an Etch-A-Sketch.  I have lost count of how many laptops I have destroyed this way.  I have starting buying them in bulk at Wal-Mart.
3. Ones comprised entirely of the exact same information found on the vendor's website make www = World Wide Worthless.
4. Ones that start out good, but just when they get to the really useful stuff, refer to content only available to paying customers.  What a great way to guarantee that neither I nor anyone I know will ever become your paying customer!
5. Ones that have a "Shock and Awe" title followed by "Aw Shucks" content because apparently the entire marketing budget was spent on the title.
6. Ones that promise me the latest BUZZ but deliver only ZZZ are not worthless only when I have insomnia.
7. Ones that claim to be about data quality, but have nothing at all to do with data quality:  "...don't make me angry.  You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
8. Ones that take the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" too far by using a dizzying collage of logos, charts, graphs and other visual aids.  This is one reason we're happy that Pablo Picasso was a painter.  However, he did once write that "art is a lie that makes us realize the truth."  Maybe he was defending whitepapers.
9. Ones that use acronyms without ever defining what they stand for remind me of that scene from Good Morning, Vietnam: "Excuse me, sir.  Seeing as how the VP is such a VIP, shouldn't we keep the PC on the QT?  Because if it leaks to the VC he could end up MIA, and then we'd all be put out in KP."
10. Ones that really know they're worthless but aren't honest about it.  Don't promise me "The Top 10 Metrics for Data Quality Scorecards" and give me a list as pointless as this one.

I am officially calling out all writers of Data Quality Whitepapers. 

Shakespeare and I both believe that you can't write anything about data quality that is worth reading. 

Send your data quality whitepapers to Obsessive-Compulsive Data Quality and if it is not worthless, then I will let the world know that you proved Shakespeare and I wrong.

And while I am on a rant roll, I am officially calling out all Data Quality Bloggers.

The International Association for Information and Data Quality (IAIDQ) is celebrating its five year anniversary by hosting:

El Festival del IDQ Bloggers – A Blog Carnival for Information/Data Quality Bloggers

For more information about the blog carnival, please follow this link:  IAIDQ Blog Carnival

Comments

[Henrik Liliendahl Sørensen]

Bashing in blogging must be carefully balanced.

As we all tend to find many things from guru’s to tools in our own country, I have also found one of my favourite sayings from Søren Kirkegaard:

“If One Is Truly to Succeed in Leading a Person to a Specific Place, One Must First and Foremost Take Care to Find Him Where He is and Begin There.

This is the secret in the entire art of helping.

Anyone who cannot do this is himself under a delusion if he thinks he is able to help someone else. In order truly to help someone else, I must understand more than he–but certainly first and foremost understand what he understands.

If I do not do that, then my greater understanding does not help him at all. If I nevertheless want to assert my greater understanding, then it is because I am vain or proud, then basically instead of benefiting him I really want to be admired by him.

But all true helping begins with a humbling.

The helper must first humble himself under the person he wants to help and thereby understand that to help is not to dominate but to serve, that to help is not to be the most dominating but the most patient, that to help is a willingness for the time being to put up with being in the wrong and not understanding what the other understands.”

[Patrik]

Vendor white papers are only another kind of sales pitch and hold no worth what so ever. I never read them.

[Chris Jackson]

I have some sympathy for your rant. Having sat on both side of the fence, the most obvious thing to state is that 95% of 'white papers' (a totally unsupported statistic just like those in many white papers) are there directly to sell you something.

The most obvious are ones which are really about a set of products. A slightly less obvious approach is where the vendor is promoting their world view, into which their products fall - or allegedly fall.

The remaining 5% are put out by companies who believe that establishing some sort of thought leadership is good in itself. This may be because they sell a lot of services rather than products (though of course the bigger consultancy machines have their own service 'products' to sell).

So are white papers a total waste of time? Not necessarily:

- They may be the only marketing material which actually explains what a product set is trying to do. Outside white papers, large vendors' materials often consist of banal ROI promises, whereas niche vendors tend to fall into the 'list-of-features' 'so what?' trap.

- If you are in serious evaluation mode, they can provide the basis for some much tougher questions on that first sales meeting. Beware the organisation whose salesman can't back up the statements in (or hasn't even read) their own white papers.

- If you have been around the block a few times it can be fun is to play the 'underlying motives' game. Which competitive products are they implicitly trying to undermine (and hence might be worth a look at)? What huge cracks between their unruly stable of acquired products are they papering over?

- Triangulation across rival vendors' papers can sometimes result in identifying genuine trends.

- They sometimes contain a few good ideas or even metaphors worth pinching, even if you ignore the product.

Maybe skim-reading white papers to establish the presence of any interesting content should be taught as a skill on IS masters degrees?

But if you offer me an exciting-sounding paper, make me give up my email address to obtain it and then offer me no more than a product flyer, expect your company or product to drop down my list of 'things worth wasting my time on'.

[Jim Harris]

Over on the SmartData Collective, Terri Rylander commented:

“Great post Jim. As both a white paper writer for Advanced Marketing Collateral and teacher of Writing White Papers at the local community college, you’ve captured some of the things I believe in and teach to my students. Having been a former consumer of white papers in my role as Director of Business Intelligence, I’ve seen a number of white papers that are more like glorified, lengthy brochures. It’s as if vendors feel the name white paper gives them license to expound on their product at length.

I believe white papers should be more educational than promotional. I feel they should:

(1) Show the reader you have a complete grasp on their issue

(2) Help them understand what is behind the issue (history and/or market drivers)

(3) Show them (generically, without mentioning your product) best practices for solving their issue

(4) Briefly introduce your product and how it relates to the solution

(5) Give the reader a way to learn more (landing page, email contact, phone number) because should they choose to, you have a much stronger "lead"

Speaking of lead gen, there’s an interesting post called Tear Your Content Walls Down that speaks to gating content with statistics that show a white paper or eBook will be downloaded 20x and up to 50x more WITHOUT a gate in front of it. Wouldn’t you rather there be more eyeballs on your content driving more qualified leads?”