by Angela Guess
In a recent interview David Corrigan, IBM Director of Strategy for the Infosphere portfolio answered a series of questions about master data management. When asked the relationship between governance and MDM, Corrigan responded, “You cannot do master data management without governance. MDM unites multiple users and data sources; governance creates an agreement on the rules of interaction among systems. Governance enables MDM’s success by providing business context and frameworks and ensures that MDM is not treated as a simple IT project. It brings users together to discuss business rules for data usage. MDM, in turn, makes governance more relevant because those governance policies become tangible. You unite the theory of governance with the application of MDM.”
Asked what top business processes require MDM, Corrigan answered, “The top processes and applications that need MDM are new account openings, customer service and retention, Web self-service and data warehousing. Additionally, MDM is helpful for new product introductions and product bundling. What is common among these situations is the generation of multiple records about the same customer, product, or service. All these examples either can create more value out of a customer relationship or product offering or lose opportunities because of duplicate records.”
