by Angela Guess
A recent article defines master data management as “the process that tries to—you pick the word—(enforce), (impose), (enable), (ensure), (maintain) consistent data throughout your organization. Its goal is a single version of the truth in data terms. This is not easy. There are technological, organizational, cultural, political, and procedural challenges involved. Any of these can undermine the effort. Further complicating the effort are staff, including executives, maybe even the CFO, who have a vested interest in ensuring their particular version of the truth prevails regardless of the actual data.”
It adds, “From a technical standpoint, there are numerous challenges to MDM. For starters, the data often is incomplete or missing. It may be incorrectly copied and distributed. Sometimes human errors produce inaccurate data and those mistakes ripple through the system uncorrected. With data growing exponentially and organizations riddled with non-integrated application silos, it is not surprising that a single version of the truth is so hard to come by.”
The article continues, “The result: executives make decisions based on inaccurate or inconsistent data. Often they may not be aware the data is problematic. Or, they may feel there is nothing they can do about it. Yet, the ability to create, maintain and leverage a single, trusted, shareable version of master data, notes Gartner, is an essential requirement for business processes and meaningful business intelligence (BI).”
