Most organisations do not decide to have a data problem. They drift into one: a new system here, a spreadsheet there, a report that nobody dares to change.
1. Different teams quote different numbers. If finance and operations disagree about a basic figure, there is no single trusted definition behind it. This is a governance issue before it is a technology issue.
2. Reports take days, not minutes. Manual extracts and copy-and-paste preparation are signs that systems are not integrated.
3. Database performance is deteriorating. Slow queries and growing maintenance windows often point to design, indexing or capacity decisions that were never revisited.
4. Nobody can say who owns a dataset. Without ownership there is no accountability for quality or access.
5. Costs keep rising without new capability. Licensing and capacity spend that grows on its own deserves a review.
If two or more of these sound familiar, an architecture and data assessment is a sensible first step: it turns a vague unease into a prioritised, costed plan.