"There is too much data."

In a recent interview with Forbes, Herman Epstain, CIO of Baltika Breweries in St. Petersburg, the largest brewery in Eastern Europe, discussed the difficulties and opportunities posed by IT around the globe. I found this bit quite telling:

So what's your biggest challenge as CIO?

There is too much data. We have a huge information system with about
10,000 users. We have a huge database, and it's growing. The size of
our database is 100 terabytes. All this information is available, but no
one can summarize it. For decision-making, we don't have the ability to
analyze this information on a just-in-time basis.

When dealing with a vast organizational network--according to this article, Baltika employs 4,500 sales representatives to service more than 200,000 points of sales throughout Russia--there are an awful lot of cracks through which something can slip. An error here or there may not mean much, but a trend of errors on a large scale could add up to a lot of Rubles going down the drain.

One cannot underestimate the importance of utilizing the right data management applications, and maintaining visibility over one's valuable business intelligence. Shareholders tend to frown upon waste, and when problems go undetected internally, the consequences of regulators or auditors finding them for you can be quite costly--in revenue, yes, but also in terms of legal issues, public relations issues, and more.

Does your business suffer from "too much data?" If so, how do you plan on corralling that data into being a tool that works for you, and not against you?