We've all been taught that 'garbage in, garbage out' is the cardinal rule of data. So we build transaction matching systems with impeccable logic: if the data isn't perfect, it can't be a match.
This rules based, 'deterministic' approach is logical, defensible, and beautifully rational.
And yet, it has a bizarre side-effect: it treats a typo in an invoice number as a more significant fact than the supplier's name, the amount, and the date all pointing to the same conclusion. The system would rather miss a match than make an intuitive leap.
We've built pedants out of software. It’s as if we valued the purity of the process over the utility of the outcome.
The most expensive cost in business isn't always an error. Sometimes, it's the cost of opportunities missed because our systems lack a semblance of common sense.
Is your organisation suffering from an overdose of logic?
