SMMT Publish Poor Used Car Sales Performance for Q2 in Error
24th August 2017
Society of motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) Used Car Sales figures released last week have given the motor industry a fright, showing a sharp drop in sales in the three months leading up to the end of June.
But we can all breathe a sigh of relief, as these figures have now been confirmed by the SMMT as incorrect, due to a data processing error.
The SMMT published figures showing a huge 13.5% drop in second-hand car sales, when the actual figure was a far more gentle fall of only 0.7%.
The BBC reported that a SMMT spokeswoman said: “[Our] data team discovered there was an issue with an algorithm they used to process the data.”
The raw data came from the DVLA, and the error occurred at some point in crunching those numbers, the spokeswoman said, resulting in the figures initially published showing a fall in Q2 from 2.12 million used car sales to 1.83 million – but the actual fall was more like 2.12 million to 2.11 million.
The figures have already gone to press in some motor industry publications, but the correct figures have now been updated on the SMMT’s website.
It does highlight the importance of using robust systems to manage and process important data for your business – and that they calculate correctly!
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