Hub Designs at Gartner MDM Summit
We’re in the final stages of getting ready for the Gartner MDM Summit at this point. It will be held on April 14-16, 2010 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.
This will be our third time at this event, and our second as an exhibitor. Last October, we exhibited as a Kiosk sponsor, and this year we will be there as a Silver sponsor. We’ll be in Booth 7 during the exhibit hall hours, and if you’re going to be attending and would like to meet with us, just contact us via our web site.
We’ll be announcing an exciting new product, and publishing a new version of one of our most popular white papers.
Here’s what you’ll learn about if you go:
- Multi-domain MDM
- MDM vision and strategy
- Customer data
- Product data
- Data warehousing, data quality and MDM
- Enterprise information architecture
- Enterprise information management
- SOA and MDM
And here are the key benefits of attending:
- Insight into creating a successful MDM program
- Persuading the business to take a leadership role
- Delivering measurable ROI by linking your MDM to business metrics
- Reducing costs and increasing efficiency by removing duplication and creating consistency
- Improving customer acquisition and cross- selling/upselling activities
- Complying with regulations and leveraging your master data to manage risk
- Consolidating and leveraging data faster following mergers & acquisitions
- Accelerating your new product introductions
- Managing your supply chain more efficiently
It’s not too late to register at the special rate of $1,795 – a $300 savings on the standard rate of $2,095! Go to gartner.com/us/mdm or call 1-866-405-2511 and mention priority code: MDMHUB.
We’d love to see you in Las Vegas! These events are like “old home week” – getting to catch up with people we haven’t seen in a while and find out what everyone in the MDM space is up to. So come along for the ride, catch a few sessions, maybe hit the tables a bit, and head home with a little less cash in your pockets but a little more knowledge in your head. And if you need help convincing the “powers that be” to let you go to the conference, Gartner has very thoughtfully put together an Attendee Justification Kit to help you convince them.
Answering Questions from LinkedIn
I got a good question via LinkedIn the other day, so I thought I’d answer it here:
Dear Dan,
I am a database architect but I am new to MDM and data governance, and I’m very interested in this area.
Can you please suggest where to start? I’ve found some information on the web (sometimes a bit disconnected), but I seem to be lost with so much information. Also, the tools that are currently available in the market – do they address all the challenges in this space?
One question I have is: if data quality is given the importance it deserves from the beginning of any project (operational or data warehouse), are MDM initiatives necessary? Are MDM projects needed because of the proliferation of applications that are developed in silos and that don’t consider what information is already available to the enterprise? In essence, should MDM be part of any project?
Thanks for your time.
Not to sound too self-serving, but I’d start with this blog and the MDM Community.
As for your question about whether MDM initiatives are necessary if data quality is given sufficient importance, please realize that MDM is a relatively new discipline which includes embedded data quality; it does not replace data quality.
What MDM does is sit between the source systems (typically CRM and ERP) and the data warehouse and business intelligence. So instead of trying to flow master data and transactional data directly into the warehouse for analysis, we bring it into the MDM system first, where it can be “mastered” – which includes fixing data quality issues. We then flow those corrections back into the source systems and downstream into the analytical systems. Which of course you can’t do without data quality tools. But data quality tools by themselves are not sufficient, because they typically don’t persist or store the data.
Your next question, are MDM projects necessary because of the proliferation of apps developed as silos – yes, that’s a big part of it. Essentially, if you developed a new architecture from scratch, you’d put a multi-domain MDM hub, able to handle many types of master data at the core, and you’d build data quality into it, then you’d surround it with integration so you can flow data from there to where ever it’s needed. So clean, accurate, consistent and timely master data would be available to any other IT project that was going on, but it would only have to be built once. “Build once, use many”, as they say.
Please keep reading and I hope you stay interested in MDM and data governance!
I got an answer from this person today that I thought I’d share with you here:
Dan,
Thank you very much for your insights. Whatever documents I had read about MDM had more to do with the people, process or technology, but didn’t cover the essence of MDM. I’ve gone through some of your blogs and I’m beginning to understand MDM.
Confessions of a Social Networker
I’ve been writing for Information Management magazine for two years now, and my latest column “Confessions of an Active Social Networker” is available at http://www.information-management.com/issues/20_2/confessions-of-an-active-social-networker-10017314-1.html.
It tells the story of how I’ve used blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter in my professional life over the past few years, and gives some tips on how people can apply some of those ideas in their careers.
Building your personal brand, whether it be in master data management and data governance, or in any other area of business or technology, is a matter of knowing your stuff, and letting other people get to know you and your voice. Having something to say in a distinctive way, adding some value, taking a stand, being a good source of information, being entertaining, being concise – all those things are helpful.
Today, there are so many sources of information – all literally at our fingertips. People are looking for someone that can help them cut to the chase – assess new technology, help them learn something new quickly, understand different schools of thought on complex topics, synthesize and present ideas from both business and technology to both management and technical audiences.
If you can do that, you’ll attract an audience. Small at first, of course. But a blog, a LinkedIn profile, a Twitter and Facebook account, perhaps a YouTube channel – these cost almost nothing but your time. But the time you invest will pay tremendous dividends down the road. Not overnight, of course. And perhaps not in cash deposited to your bank account. But in credibility, in relationships, in marketing exposure, in reinforcing your message, in personal branding, in networking – the effects are undeniable.
I still meet people and companies who shrug social media off or who just “don’t get” blogging. Corporations who are passing up an incredibly valuable and cost effective way to engage in dialog with their customers and potential customers. People who have a wealth of knowledge to share but don’t take the time. So much untapped potential in the world. But I see the growth figures mentioned in the article in Information Management, and I think people are starting to catch on. Our corporate blog gets three times the traffic as our web site. And we’ve had clients hire us specifically because they’ve read a number of the articles on the blog and have told us “we can tell that you know your stuff”.
So if anyone challenges you on the ROI of blogging or social media, send them to me – I’ve got a few good anecdotes I can tell them.
AMB Releases Community Edition
Hub Designs has been a partner of AMB, a provider of information governance, quality and discovery software, since November 2008.
Now AMB is launching an open source version of its Information Governance Suite, called the Community Edition. AMB delivers tools to facilitate real time governance, and is now extending its reach as one of the first major vendors with an open source version of its core product.
This might be an ideal way for companies looking to familiarize themselves with a data profiling and data quality product to learn the tool, get a data governance proof of concept up and running in a cost effective way, and then demonstrate value to the business.
The Community Edition allows you to:
- become familiar with the concept of data profiling as a way of identifying and fixing information anomalies
- enable enterprises embarking on a data stewardship program to use the Community Edition to spotlight, identify and determine the priority of their internal information issues
- enable organizations to define and automate a repeatable process, using software to administer the information governance program that aligns with the repeatable process, not the other way around
The Community Edition should provide a core set of data profiling and governance, and training and support is available, as are upgrades to the Professional and Enterprise Editions.
For more information, contact AMB at 1-847-899-5154 or community@ambpdm.com, or visit http://www.ambpdm.com.
Is It Taxonomy Season Already?
Like death and taxes, every Master Data Management (MDM) project goes through a taxonomy definition exercise. During this time, Data Architects realize whether their payment of time thus far will yield a refund (of time) or require them to spend nights and weekends in jail (at the office). Let this article serve as your free consultation with your personal Taxonomy Preparation professional.
An MDM taxonomy is simply a structured hierarchy applied to the topic of the MDM project (for example: products, people, or customers) that defines that topic’s attribution. At each level, this hierarchy enforces the inheritance of characteristics to all of its children and their children. For example, the taxonomy of biology that has remained in my memory since 6th grade contains the levels Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Any animal or plant can belong to only one member of the lowest level, species, and each level of the taxonomy defines the inherited characteristics of its children. The same concept is core to an MDM design and each widget in an MDM topic can only reside in only one of the lowest taxonomy levels.
The number of levels in the MDM taxonomy varies based on the business need, topic, and a count of the widgets in the topic. There are standards available to guide you in level counts and names if you want to follow them, but the assignment of attributes, definitions, and placement of your widgets in the structure is business-specific. Plan for a significant investment of effort to get the taxonomy and item assignments correct. This effort should result in the business agreeing on a taxonomy containing the fewest levels necessary to accurately represent the MDM topic’s widgets, along with a few other guidelines.
The topic of an MDM project may have many business purposes and be categorized by business users in a variety of different ways. This is expected and encouraged. We are not trying to restrict how the business analyzes the topic’s widgets. The taxonomy we are concerned with is a single hierarchy defining widgets through attribution characteristics as described in the prior biology example. We do this to create a single unambiguous definition that can be applied to every existing and new widget so that each widget falls under one and only one of the taxonomy’s lowest levels. The business must validate the one widget per lowest taxonomy level rule, what attributes are common to each level, and that the attributes of any level apply to all levels below it. The taxonomy not only results in a standardized method of defining widgets, but also allows for automatic inheritance of widget properties during definition which reduces the workload and chances of errors during the widget information entry.
Expect to encounter puzzled looks when introducing the concept of attribution-driven taxonomy. Business subject matter experts do not think of their widgets in those terms. Instead, they will be thinking in terms of how the business reports on the widgets. The distinction is clear only when you remember the purpose the taxonomy serves. Conducting workshops with business users across the board promotes the required consensus. After a few episodes of realigning discussions from a reporting mindset into an attribution mindset, the users will start to change their thinking and the results will be a valid taxonomy that the MDM initiative can grow on. Without this foundation, your success will be limited.
Position Available in MDM Application Sales
With so many people unemployed in our economy right now, the Hub Designs Blog is trying to help out by posting an occasional MDM-related position.
MDM Application Sales Rep, Western Territory — located in Southern California (LA) or Denver
Primary job duty is to sell business applications software/solutions and related services to prospective and existing customers. Manage sales through forecasting, account resource allocation, account strategy, and planning. Develop solution proposals encompassing all aspects of the application. Participate in the development, presentation and sales of a value proposition. Negotiate pricing and contractual agreement to close the sale. Identify and develop strategic alignment with key third party influencers.
Acknowledged authority within the Corporation. Provides leadership and expertise in the development of new products/services/processes, frequently operating at the leading edge of technology. 12 years applicable experience including 9 years of sales experience. Successful sales track record.
Ability to penetrate accounts, meet with stakeholders within accounts. Interaction with C level players. Team player with strong interpersonal /communication skills. Excellent communication/negotiating/closing skills with prospects/customers. Travel may be needed. Bachelor degree or equivalent.
If you’re interested in this position, please reply to info@hubdesigns.com and we’ll pass your response on to the hiring manager.
