by Angela Guess
Michael Sharpe has written a new piece on methods for mastering master data management. He begins, “There’s a disconnect between the emphasis companies place on real-time metrics and the amount of time IT organizations spend developing policies and procedures for managing the data that comprises those metrics. Everyone wants to turn raw stats into wisdom in real time, but you can’t even begin to do that if you don’t have a handle on your data. And, complicating things further, cloud providers rarely provide customers with the tools necessary to manage their data stored off site–meaning it’s being copied, moved around, and inevitably pushed out of sync.”
Sharpe continues, “For years, we’ve talked about the value of having a ‘single version of the truth,’ but the concept of master data involves a bunch of different elements, including how information is created, read, updated, deleted, and searched. What’s keeping many companies we work with from taking advantage of their master data? A methodology to manage it. A master data set with errors can wreak havoc, especially if multiple applications depend on it. Beyond outright errors, such as incorrect pricing, overlapping data sets from acquisitions can lead to subtle inconsistencies, like one customer having multiple entries in the CRM system.”
He goes on, “The solution, MDM, isn’t available in a nice little application you can buy, install, and forget. Rather, it’s a cohesive collection of technologies and processes that combine to create and maintain consistent and accurate data throughout your entire company, including data that resides off site. You can spend a small fortune on data warehouses and connectors to enterprise systems, and the technology piece is important. However, without the business processes to maintain consistent data, undertaking an MDM project is pointless. Processes critical to MDM include data collection, normalization, transformation, governance, and consolidation. MDM may be applied to customer data integration (CDI) and product information management (PIM). CDI is about the management of customer information for internal use. PIM is related to managing product data from a central location for internal, and potentially external, consumption.”
photo credit: Marion Doss
