In Hollywood, the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game measures how closely an actor is connected to Kevin Bacon. The lower the “Bacon Score,” the fewer steps it takes to link them. Nicole Kidman was in The Peacemaker with George Clooney who was in 8 with Kevin Bacon, so she has a Bacon Score of 2! You get the idea.

Now, let’s apply that to business systems: How many steps does your key business data take before it reaches where it’s actually needed? If it has to be entered multiple times, reprocessed, manually reconciled, or copied across different systems, your “SSOT Score” (Single Source of Truth Score) is well above 1—and that’s bad for efficiency, accuracy, and future AI-driven insights.

🚀 An SSOT Score of 1 means data is entered once and is immediately available everywhere it’s needed—no Chinese whispers, no duplicate records, no confusion. Ideally, your data should be the Kevin Bacon of your organisation—instantly connected to every system that needs it, without unnecessary detours.

But here’s the problem: too many organisations have business systems that are more like a game of Six Degrees of Separation, where data meanders through spreadsheets, disconnected databases, emails, and, heaven forbid, printouts before it finally reaches its destination (often inconsistently).

If you have to:
📌 Manually copy data between systems
📌 Email spreadsheets around to different teams
📌 Reconcile different versions of the “truth”
📌 Chase people to confirm which figure is correct

…then your Data Bacon Score is looking more like a full English breakfast—too many moving parts, too much mess, and a high chance of something getting burned. 🔥

Why this Matters More Than Ever

With AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) now training on company data, the quality and integrity of that data are more critical than ever. If we don’t establish a clear, trusted, single source of truth, we risk training AI on a patchwork of conflicting, outdated, or duplicated data—leading to results that are as useful as a Kevin Bacon movie without Kevin Bacon. 🎬

So, what’s your company’s Data Bacon Score? Is it a crisp, clean 1, or does it take six degrees (and a few manual workarounds) to get to the truth?

Let’s aim for SSOT = 1—because business systems should work for us, not the other way around.