Bad data can break new applications or systems, according to experts, and in order to avoid pitfalls associated with it, it's necessary to loop in business managers to help IT staffers understand and prioritize the cleansing of mission-critical data.

"What they need to do is analyze the legacy sources early in the migration effort—measure the levels of quality and identify the quality flaws that will cause the new system to experience issues," said Ted Friedman, an analyst with Gartner. "Then make the decision of whether to clean up the issues at the legacy sources or while data is being migrated from old to new."

This requires heavy involvement by the business and not just its IT department, Friedman continued, explaining that the business executives know what qualifies as good enough in terms of data quality.

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