by Angela Guess
A new article states, “Master data management (MDM) can improve the visibility, accuracy and usefulness of critical data, rapidly yielding a return on investment for the organisation. A successful MDM strategy enables the business vision and strategy to become reality. However, much can go wrong, and when it does, it can be a costly exercise for the business. Here are the five most common MDM blunders.”
The first potential problem is no systems integration: “The real cost of poor MDM practices tally up when you start analysing the data. When master data from two systems do not share the same names or codes, integration becomes difficult. Disparate sources feed into a data warehouse or reporting platform and numbers become seriously skewed.”
The second problem is reporting difficulties: “Reporting across systems on master data dimensions can be a nightmare and the subsequent cost to business intelligence (BI) is high. Again, take the customer as an example: the true value of customers can only be understood if you understand their full basket, as well as all interactions and relationships. A dimensional business matrix will allow for reporting numbers across sources on the BI platform, but requires effective upstream MDM processes. There are ways of handling master data on the BI platform when poor MDM practices are implemented, but at a cost.”
Read about the rest of the problems here.
photo credit: HikingArtist.com
