by Angela Guess
Loraine Lawson of IT Business Edge asks the question, “How do most businesses handle master data? Many don’t, if the 163 organizations surveyed by Aberdeen Research are any indication, which found 45 percent had no formal master data management (MDM) system. The next most popular answer: Homegrown MDM, with single and multi-domain MDM each getting 19 percent. Only about 10 percent were using cloud or open source or some ‘other’ option. But is that a fair reflection of the market? I’m not sure. It certainly is more grim than a recent TDWI survey, which queried 369 companies and found that about 10 percent aren’t doing MDM and have no plans to do so.”
She goes on, “Aberdeen approaches surveys differently than other tech research groups, and that can make it a bit hard to reconcile differences between the findings. It has a very specific format: It divides companies into Best-in-Class, Industry Average and Laggards, then compares the classes. That leads to findings like, ‘… if a Laggard organization could improve to Best-in-Class performance, they could save each knowledge worker 355 hours per year, or a full 8.9 work weeks of time and effort.’ It can be difficult to follow, but in the end, you can get some pretty clear stats on how an organization could benefit from whatever Aberdeen’s researching. Although, to be honest, it does make me wonder to what extent unmeasured factors influence the results. For instance, what if Best-in-Class companies just hire better, smarter workers?”
