Share Your Knowledge at OAUG COLLABORATE 09
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Hub Solution Designs is a member of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), and I’m the OAUG Education Committee’s track manager for Master Data Management.
We’ve started planning next May’s conference, and we’re looking for strong papers on Oracle Customer Hub, Oracle Product Hub, and Hyperion Data Relationship Management.
Here’s the latest reminder from OAUG on the Call for Papers, which ends October 31st.
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Share Your Knowledge at COLLABORATE 09!
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest) invite you to share your Oracle knowledge at the premier annual conference for Oracle customers — COLLABORATE 09: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, taking place May 3-7, 2009, Orange County Convention Center West, Orlando, Florida.
Submit a presentation proposal by Friday, October 31 to be considered to speak at this leading user-driven event and have the chance to:
- Share best practices and tested solutions for Oracle technologies and applications.
- Enhance your own Oracle knowledge through the peer networking and exchange.
- Learn from Oracle experts and leaders through other education sessions.
If you are an Oracle Applications professional with an interest in Oracle E-Business Suite, Hyperion, Agile, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle Retail, Communications Billing and Revenue Management and MetaSolv Software, as well as applications technology, we invite your proposals for the COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum.
For more specific information about COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum, including tracks, specific industry- or product-related areas of emphasis, presenter requirements and the presentation submission process, please refer to the call for presentations on the COLLABORATE 09 OAUG conference Web site.
Attention Team Oracle! All Oracle employees interested in speaking at COLLABORATE 09 are to contact Michael Neuendorff at michael.neuendorff@oracle.com. Do not submit papers through the official COLLABORATE 09 call for papers!
We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Important Paper Submission Dates and Deadlines
- October 31, 2008, 11:59 p.m. EDT: Presentation abstracts due.
- January 12, 2009: Accepted presenters notified by the OAUG.
- January 23, 2009: Acceptance of the compliance agreement due.
- March 8, 2009: All presentation materials including white paper and presentations are due.
Experts and Analysts Panel Discussion at MDM Summit
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I’m going to be attending the upcoming MDM Summit in New York on Sunday, 10/19/08 through Tuesday, 10/21/08.
I’ll be on an “Experts and Analysts Panel”, moderated by Jim Ericson, Editorial Director of DM Review, along with Jill Dyché, Partner & Co-Founder of Baseline Consulting and Aaron Zornes, Chief Research Officer of The MDM Institute.
The session will be on the first day of the conference (Sun. 10/19) from 5:15 – 6:00 pm, followed by the opening night reception in the exhibit hall.
I’m looking forward to it – Jim is really sharp, and I always enjoy hearing Jill’s and Aaron’s perspectives on the MDM space.
For more information, go to www.mdm-summit.com/MDM/agenda.html.
Customer Data Quality
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Quite often, an enterprise faces an event where it needs to load massive customer files into its enterprise information systems.
Examples include integrating a new subsidiary’s customer master with the parent’s CRM or ERP system, migrating to a brand new ERP, consolidating customers from various silos within the enterprise, importing partner files and their customers, etc.
Sometimes, attempts are made to programmatically improve data quality within a customer record, but because of tight deadlines, data quality across the file is usually not given serious attention.
IT’s thinking is usually that “We received 50,000 customer records; we uploaded 50,000 records – job well done!” But wait a minute, is that really true?
It is highly likely that duplicates exist within the file and the same customer is being loaded more than once. There’s also a possibility that the same customer already exists in your target system.
Multiple instances of a single customer can lead to end-user confusion, serious reporting errors and even to reduced efficiency and impacts to customer service.
A good approach is to be proactive about data quality and to plan for spending extra cycles correcting these types of problems in the customer files before doing the migration.
A simple tactic is to extract the existing customer records from the target system and run this file along with the legacy / source system data through an address validation and matching process. A number of vendors can do this task for you at a reasonable cost, ranging from 15 cents to 55 cents per record.
The next step is to separate the non-duplicates and load only these records in the target system. The duplicates are either managed outside the target system (by building cross-references in your data warehouse, for example) or, if your target system has a way to maintain cross-references, by uploading the cross-references only into the target system (typically an MDM hub or ERP application).
A major benefit of this approach is that the new records are genuinely new and have validated addresses for deliverability. This significantly enhances corporate data quality. Then, IT can say “We received 50,000 customer records; we uploaded only 40,000 records, the other 10,000 were duplicates – job well done!”
September Column in DM Review
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Here’s an excerpt from my latest “MDM Insights” column in DM Review.
After watching both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions I saw a pattern playing out that (believe it or not) applies to master data management (MDM) projects and ongoing data governance initiatives.
Just as a strong business case is usually important in getting initial funding, communicating your successes is critical to retaining it. But, it’s usually better to let someone else tell your story.
Click on “Taking Credit for Your MDM Success” to continue reading.
And please let us know your thoughts by commenting here …
Announcing an Intensive, Two-Day On-Site Seminar
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Attaining High Quality, Integrated Information
High quality, integrated master data is all that matters in your business/IT landscape. Sure, people, processes and technology are important. After all, they get the brunt of everyone’s attention. But in the end, superior business intelligence, smooth transactions and harmonious customer interactions all depend on the quality and usability of your master data.
Why This Seminar Program?
Hub Designs and Perera have teamed up to create this important, two-day on-site seminar program for organizations struggling with low quality, fragmented enterprise data. With over 40 years of combined experience, you can expect a new level of practical insight that is unavailable in any other forum.
Our goal is to bring unparalleled Master Data Management expertise to your front door. A blend of education and hands-on guidance, your organization will gain the knowledge to confidently undertake and succeed with your MDM initiative… and transform your enterprise master data into an appreciating corporate asset.
Agenda For Mastering Your Data
Together, we will explore the issues, challenges and opportunities associated with creating and maintaining high quality, integrated enterprise master data:
- Creating a business case for managing customer, product, supplier, financial and employee master data
- Analyzing the types, nature and severity of enterprise data quality problems
- Determining quality and integration requirements for enterprise master data
- Creating enterprise master data architecture and models
- Formulating a plan to correct and transform your existing enterprise master data
- Developing and embracing master data content and format standards
- Integrating and synchronizing master reference data within and across enterprise systems
- Identifying, evaluating and selecting MDM software and third-party data sources
- Designing data quality processes for continuous master data management
- Determining metrics for assessing, monitoring and certifying the quality of master data
- Organizing and managing a data governance and stewardship program
This program is geared to business, project management and IT personnel who are actively involved in Master Data Management (MDM), Customer Data Integration (CDI) and data quality initiatives. The ideal session brings together up to 15 participants from your organization to discuss the production, distribution, consumption and maintenance of enterprise data.
By conducting this program at your site, stakeholders have the flexibility to join program segments that are appropriate to their functional areas. We charge a fixed program fee so you can tailor attendance to your needs.
Schedule TODAY!
For more information or to schedule this two-day program at your location, please call us at 781-749-8910 or visit our web site.
Call for Papers for Next Oracle Applications User Group Conference
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It’s that time of year again! As a member of the Education Committee for the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), I’m helping to plan next May’s COLLABORATE 09 Conference. As you might expect, I’m managing the “Master Data Management” track.
Here’s the announcement for the Call for Papers, which ends on October 31, 2008. Please follow the instructions below to submit your Master Data Management paper idea.
Share Your Knowledge at COLLABORATE 09!
May 3-7, 2009; Orange County Convention Center West, Orlando, FL; http://oaug.collaborate09.com/
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) invite you to share your Oracle knowledge at the premier annual conference for Oracle customers — COLLABORATE 09: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, taking place May 3-7, 2009, Orange County Convention Center West, Orlando, FL.
Submit a presentation proposal by Friday, October 31 to be considered to speak at this leading user-driven event and have the chance to:
• Share best practices and tested solutions for Oracle technologies and applications.
• Enhance your own Oracle knowledge through the peer networking and exchange.
• Learn from Oracle experts and leaders through other education sessions.
If you are an Oracle Applications professional with an interest in Oracle E-Business Suite, Hyperion, Agile, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle Retail, Communications Billing and Revenue Management and MetaSolv Software, as well as applications technology, we invite your proposals for the COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum.
For more specific information about COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum, including tracks, specific industry- or product-related areas of emphasis, presenter requirements and the presentation submission process, please refer to the call for presentations on the COLLABORATE 09 OAUG conference Web site.
Attention Team Oracle! All Oracle employees interested in speaking at COLLABORATE 09 are to contact Michael Neuendorff at michael.neuendorff@oracle.com. Do not submit papers through the official COLLABORATE 09 call for papers!
We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Important Dates and Deadlines
* October 31, 2008, 11:59 p.m. EDT: Presentation abstracts due.
* January 12, 2009: Accepted presenters notified by the OAUG.
* March 8, 2009: All presentation materials including white paper and presentations are due.
Getting to the Single View
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If not Master Data Management, what?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) – the “back office” – has been around forever, and the “customer master” function in most ERPs is adequate, but due to acquisitions, many companies have more than one ERP system, and some companies let major business units build their own separate technology architecture.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – the “front office” – was supposed to be a “silver bullet”, bringing businesses closer to their customers, delivering 1-to-1 marketing, and increasing sales.
And data warehousing and business intelligence were supposed to deliver performance management and analytics, enabling better decision-making and deep analyses, but have sometimes proven to be difficult to deliver and extend.
But to varying extents, all of the technologies failed to deliver on all of their promises.
So circa 2004, along came Customer Data Integration (CDI) and Master Data Management (MDM). I call it the “hole in the donut”. MDM takes information from source systems like CRM and ERP, and eventually passes it on to downstream applications like data warehousing and business intelligence. But a lot of magic happens in that “hole in the donut”.
Information is consolidated into an MDM hub, usually using service-oriented architecture based integration technology. It’s cleansed using data quality software and completed or enriched with third party information. And it’s managed by a data governance organization. For more details on the end-to-end MDM process, see our earlier post on the “Five Essential Elements of MDM“.
So that would give you the Single View of the Customer (or Product, or Supplier, or whatever data domain you were mastering).
And from there, most companies would, in fact, flow the consolidated / cleansed / completed information into a data warehouse or business intelligence application.
But if your MDM hub is missing, and you don’t have the data governance organization or processes, all of the above is going to be much more difficult, if not impossible.
Organizations are waking up to this, realizing that they’ve got “the donut” i.e. key pieces of the puzzle (plenty of source systems, decent integration technology, tons of third party data) but no data quality tools and no central MDM hub.
If you want the Single View (the “whole donut”), you need to invest in those missing pieces.
Structured vs. Ad Hoc Data Governance
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I was struck recently by the difference between companies that have a formal, structured approach to data governance, versus an informal, unstructured or “ad hoc” approach.
In many cases, companies with an ad hoc approach already have the right people, in the right places, doing the right things.
But it’s not formally part of their job description. They just do it because they know it’s the right thing to do, or that the company really needs it.
So they act as unsung heroes of data stewardship, cleaning up data manually, writing scripts to make data corrections in bulk, even working together in teams to do data governance tasks, without ever formalizing it into a data governance program.
I wrote yesterday about whether data governance should be located in the business (with support from IT) or in IT (with support from the business). It’s a natural tendency of business people to think that data management, since it involves computers, should be part of IT. And it’s a natural tendency of the IT people to think that only the business knows the subject matter well enough to manage it.
But wherever you stand on this question, I think it’s better to have a structured approach to data governance. Set up a data governance committee or team, define its mission and processes, and give them the technology tools they’ll need to achieve the mission.
Relying on an ad hoc or informal approach is risky. People take new jobs, go on vacation, or get burned out. So you can’t rely forever on the unsung heroes of data stewardship.
I’ve said many times that if companies treated their physical assets (like inventory or cash) the same way they treated their information assets (particularly customer data, for some reason), then people would be going to jail.
Start thinking about how your organization can improve its data governance maturity, or start a data governance function, if you don’t already have one. You’ll find that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”. In other words, once you start, if you remain diligent and patient, the rest of the organization will ultimately see the value of adding data governance to “how we do things here”.
Here are some good resources for further reading:
- “So You Want to be a Data Champion?” by Tom Carlock
- Wikipedia article on Data Governance
- The Data Governance Institute’s Data Governance Framework
- The Master Data Management Institute
- Data Governance Blog
Please let us know via a comment if you have any other resources on data governance you’d like to suggest.
Where Data Governance Belongs
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Both IT people and business people usually realize when data management issues are having an impact on the company. And senior executives are usually at least aware of the issues with important master data domains like customer, supplier and product, because they live with the end results of data quality issues every day.
But sometimes the business is reluctant to hire anyone to work on data quality or data governance. So here’s my question: is it better for the IT team to take that on, if the business doesn’t step up to the plate?
I usually recommend that Master Data Management (MDM) and data governance programs be driven by the business, and in a perfect world, that probably is the best route.
But even if the business is driving, they usually need a lot of IT support. And if the business doesn’t want to take on the issue at all, perhaps it’s better to have IT doing it than have no one doing it.
Please share your thoughts via a quick comment here.
Lessons on MDM from My Summer Vacation
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Hub Solution Designs Blog - Summer Vacation Route
Since I returned from my annual two-week sailing vacation, I’ve been thinking about how to tie some lessons learned on the trip to managing successful MDM initiatives.
Don’t Be Too Ambitious
Last year, we tried to cover too much ground.
This year, we deliberately sailed less and stayed in port longer. We covered about 200 nautical miles (instead of 250), but we were more rested and relaxed when we got back, and we enjoyed the trip more.
The lesson for your MDM initiatives: don’t start off with a pan-galactic, enterprise-wide vision. Start with a small but significant win that will give you a good master data foundation that you can build on, so that later, you can go after more domains of data and parts of the enterprise.
Stay On Course but Be Flexible
The weather was a bit challenging on this trip – just about every day had afternoon showers and thunderstorms. But we figured out that when an entire day of rain was forecast, that was a good day to stay in port and postpone leaving for the next harbor. It required a little flexibility in our itinerary, but it was much safer and more comfortable.
So make sure your MDM initiative can roll with the punches. You’re going to run into political battles, funding issues, delays, technical problems, you name it. But it’s “all in the attitude”. If you, as project leader or key team member, can stay positive and flexible, while remaining focused on the destination, your project is more likely to stay on track and you’ll enjoy it more.
Sail When You Can, Power When You Must
This year, I was more accepting than usual of using the engine when the wind wasn’t cooperating. There were several days when the wind was too light, or from the wrong direction. Normally, that would really bug me, but this year, I found it was no big deal.
In an MDM initiative, like most things in life, there are going to be parts you really enjoy, and parts you endure so you can get to the parts you enjoy. But try to learn from everything, and don’t begrudge the hard parts too much.
Building an MDM hub, integrating it with major source systems in your company, improving data quality, incorporating third party information, and creating a data governance function – these are all significant achievements, and you’ll look back later on the total journey (not just the fun parts) with pride.
August Column in DM Review
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Here’s a quick excerpt from my latest “MDM Insights” column in DM Review.
I recently attended a three-day training class on one of the leading data quality products. It got me thinking about the symbiotic relationship between master data management (MDM) and data quality.
MDM without a robust approach to data quality can be dangerous. We’ve all heard the IT cliché “garbage in, garbage out.” But that is very true of building an MDM hub solution. You’re literally at the mercy of the worst data entry person in the company as you gather information from any number of source systems to feed into your new hub. If you don’t have a strong filter for what goes into the hub, both during the initial load and during day-to-day operation, you’ll quickly be fielding complaints from businesspeople around the company on the quality of the information coming out of your hub.
Click on “The Relationship Between Master Data Management and Data Quality” to continue reading.
And please let us know your thoughts by commenting here …
Governing Unstructured Data
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I had a very interesting briefing the other day by Johnnie Konstantas, the VP of Marketing at Varonis.
Varonis is a software company that focuses on governing unstructured data. Johnnie’s perspective was pretty illuminating:
- A 2007 IDC study found unstructured data accounts for over 80% of all business data
- In 2008, a study by the Ponemon Institute found that 84% of organizations believe their unstructured data is accessible by people with no clear business need and 32% have experienced an unstructured data breach
- The IDC study also found that data grows at a rate of 57% per year
There have been high profile stories lately about unauthorized people snooping in presidential candidates’ passport files, the theft of 94 million credit cards from TJX, and the exposure by an investment firm of data on 2,000 clients, including Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
And in June, The Identity Theft Resource Center reported that nearly 16 percent of breaches this year came from insiders, up from 6 percent in 2007.
Given that many of the people I talk to or work with are building Master Data Management solutions for their companies, or putting together a Data Governance program, I had to stop and ask myself “maybe we’re all missing the forest for the trees here”.
Granted, the picture on the structured data side of things needs improvement too. Companies still struggle to pull together the “Single View of the Customer”. Islands of data still exist, and artificial silos still cost companies money and hurt productivity.
But I think we ignore the unstructured data problem at our peril. I believe savvy business owners will eventually expect an integrated approach to governing both structured and unstructured data. Even though the technology tools might be quite different, a common organization and policies addressing both types of data will be necessary.
It’s not enough to lock up the structured data, when over 80% of the information in the company is unstructured and is not adequately protected or managed.
I haven’t had a chance to thoroughly research Varonis and its products yet, but it looks like a unique way to govern the unstructured data on file systems, and I’m impressed by the company’s approach.
One Year Anniversary of This Blog
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We’ve been writing this blog for a year now, with a total of 83 posts so far.
It’s been a very positive experience. We’ve had clients tell us “the reason we hired your firm was because of your blog”. And we’ve gotten lots of great feedback from our partners (Oracle, IBM, SAP, Initiate Systems and Siperian).
What we’ve tried to do is to write for people who are new to Master Data Management (MDM) and looking for basic information (like “Useful Definitions for MDM”,“Five Essential Elements of MDM” and “Ten Best Practices for Master Data Management”).
But we’ve also tried to cover more advanced topics too (such as “Master Data Management and the Art of Politics”, “The Key Requirement in Choosing a Product MDM Hub”, and “Data Governance Critical to MDM Success”).
We thought that by presenting a mix of basic and advanced topics, and highlighting key milestones in the development of the firm, we could keep your interest, and hopefully keep you coming back.
The numbers tell a good story. We’ve had a total of 8,100 hits in the past year, with an average of 32 hits per day (over the last 30 days), 200 hits per week and 835 per month (over the last 6 months).
Our “Top 10″ posts have been:
- Ten Best Practices for Master Data Management
- Our MDM Partnership Strategy
- How Master Data Management is Similar to ERP
- Different Styles of MDM Hub
- Metadata and Master Data Management
- Five Essential Elements of MDM
- Critical Data Quality Questions
- The Key Requirement in Choosing a Product MDM Hub
- Master Data Management and the Art of Politics
- MDM Business Case Creation & ROI Analysis
We get most of our traffic from our web site at www.hubdesigns.com (there’s a prominent “Blog” link there), and from the “Master Data Management” and “Customer Data Integration” tags at WordPress.com. We also get a fair amount from Google Reader, My Yahoo, and my LinkedIn profile.
Our Top 10 search terms that people are using to get to the blog are: “Hub Solution Designs”, “Dan Power”, “Gaurav Arora”, “data quality questions”, “MDM vendors”, “Master Data Management best practices”, “critical to quality”, “Oracle MDM”, “ERP and MDM” and “Master Data best practices”.
We’ve tried to keep the blog vendor-neutral, and have resisted the temptation (so far at least) to accept any form of advertising.
In the coming year, we’re looking forward to more in-depth coverage of the leading MDM and data quality platforms, more insights gleaned from working with our clients, more pointers to other places where our writing appears (like my monthly column in the online edition of DM Review), and continuing to try to break new ground and be thought leaders on MDM.
If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see us cover here, please let us know via a comment. It’s been an honor to write for you over the past year, and we’ll work hard to make this a useful resource for you in the coming year.
July Column in DM Review
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Here’s a quick excerpt from my latest “MDM Insights” column in DM Review.
It’s a long journey from the first efforts of “customer cleanup” to a full-fledged data governance program. But that’s where many companies start. They gradually accept that there are issues with their customer data such as:
- A lack of consistently applied standards and controls,
- Problems arising from conversion of customer data from acquired companies,
- Lack of ownership of customer data,
- Invalid addresses leading to undelivered and returned mail or
- Customer service problems caused by large numbers of duplicate and inaccurate records.
So they form a committee, hire a consulting firm, and involve their internal IT folks. That’s a great start, but it’s important to realize that this is not a once-and-done project.
Click on “From Customer Cleanup to Data Governance” to continue reading.
And please let us know your thoughts by commenting here …
Building a Data Governance Organization
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I’m often asked how many data stewards a company needs.
A rule of thumb I’ve used for quite a while is “one data steward per $1 billion in annual revenue”, but of course that can’t be a hard and fast rule.
Depending on the company, the degree of automation, what data quality tools are available, and the major processes around the enterprise, that number is going to vary.
Here are some thoughts to keep in mind as you build your data governance organization:
- Build the business case and secure your funding. Don’t forget this is a multi-year effort. Several times, I’ve seen data governance teams and MDM initiatives that never thought beyond their first year’s funding, and who were surprised when funding for Year 2 and beyond wasn’t forthcoming.
- You’ll probably need a multi-layer, cross-functional approach. Start with a high level group that sets data policy, usually called a Data Governance Steering Committee or Data Governance Council (DGC). Your executive sponsor(s) should be involved with the DGC. Then you’ll probably have a small group of data stewards which handle day-to-day data management, which reports to the Data Governance Council.
- Focus on your data governance processes, including relevant metrics that show the impact to the business, and on communicating those metrics and their impact to the rest of the enterprise. Create a communications and education strategy to get the word out.
- Look for IT people who “speak business” and business people who “speak IT”. These liaison-type people are going to be crucial to your data governance organization. Although I believe that data governance should be driven by the business, there’s no question that you’re going to need a lot of support from IT. So look for the “bi-lingual” folks in your company – they’re out there and they can be incredibly valuable in understanding the business impact of data issues, and in providing the technology support that the data stewards will need.
- Don’t forget about metadata. In your travels as a data governance organization, you’re going to run into a lot of metadata (information about information). Develop a disciplined approach to cataloging and maintaining the metadata you come across. In many ways, that will probably be one of the most useful outputs of your data governance initiative.
We’ll have more to say on data governance in this blog in the future, but let me leave you with one idea. Instead of describing your MDM initiative as (hopefully) including data governance, think of it as a data governance initiative that has an MDM component.
You’ll be doing data governance in your enterprise long after your current MDM hub implementation is over.
If you don’t agree, or you have a perspective on data governance you’d like to share, please comment here on this blog.
June Column in DM Review
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Here’s our latest “MDM Insights” column in the online edition of DM Review.
The technology industry is the mother lode of acronyms, and in the field of master data management (MDM), there are more than a few. We have the subsets of MDM known as customer data integration (CDI) and product information management (PIM). And in the closely related fields of middleware and integration, we’ve got enterprise information integration (EII); enterprise application integration (EAI); extract, transform and load (ETL); service-oriented architecture (SOA), among others. You get the point. Today, the acronym I’d like to focus on is business process management (BPM).
Click on “Master Data Management and Business Process Management” to continue reading.
And please let us know your thoughts by commenting here …
Importance of Integration to MDM
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We’ve discussed many other topics on this blog, such as data quality, best practices for Master Data Management, the five essential elements of MDM, and Master Data Management and the art of politics.
But one topic I don’t think we’ve given enough “airtime” to is integration. There are many different types of integration technology available today, and a veritable alphabet soup of acronyms to go with them.
There’s Extract-Transform-Load (ETL), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Enteprise Information Integration (EII) and Business Process Management (BPM).
In an upcoming piece in the online edition of DM Review magazine which I wrote last week, I go into more detail on the different types of integration and why I think Business Process Management offers some real advantages, due to the close fit with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and its flexibility and ability to model complex business processes that span multiple application silos.
But as I said, that’s a topic for another piece, and we’ll post a link to that here when it becomes available later this month.
In today’s piece, I want to urge MDM project team leaders, program managers, and “data champions” to think about the importance of integration itself, and the existence of certain typical requirements.
While integration doesn’t always have to be real-time, if you find yourself thinking solely in a batch-oriented mode, take a step back and ask yourself, “what will we be giving up by not providing for any real-time capabilities?”
And while straightforward, point-to-point XML data exchange may be all you need, ask yourself if you’ll be giving up anything important by not being able to model, deploy and manage business processes.
And try not to limit yourself by planning only for one-way integration into the hub. As hard as it is to convince the business owners to subscribe to the data quality improvements and external content that you typically do in an MDM hub project, you’ll make it much harder to achieve your expected ROI for the MDM initiative if the source system business owners don’t receive any of those improvements.
What are some of the integration “sticking points” you’ve run into on your MDM projects?
OAUG Collaborate 08 Presentation
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TechTarget recently had an article that quoted heavily from my presentation at the recent Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) conference, COLLABORATE 08.
The article discusses the Master Data Management program at Tektronix, Inc. and segues into an overview of MDM based on my presentation at the conference.
Here’s the full link:
http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid41_gci1312492,00.html
Please let us know what you think of the article by commenting.
Favorite MDM-Related Web Sites (Part 1)
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I’ve been building up a Favorites folder of web sites relating to Master Data Management for several years now, so I thought I’d share some of them with you today.
First, I should mention our own site, www.hubdesigns.com. It has some great MDM resources, and we’re updating the Publications page to include our MDM Summit, OAUG Collaborate 08 and DIG 2008 conference presentations.
Another site I find very helpful is www.dmreview.com. And my monthly column, “MDM Insights”, started in their Online Edition last month, discussing Master Data Management and Service-Oriented Architecture.
I’ve always found Aaron Zornes’ analysis of the MDM market and its players very insightful, and I still visit The MDM Institute and the MDM Summit sites pretty often, particularly their MDM product reviews.
On the topic of Data Governance, an area close to my heart, there’s a good blog called the Data Governance Blog, which includes a couple of useful definitions of Data Governance.
A blog I read regularly is Jill Dyché’s Blog. It’s written in a very engaging first person style, but still contains some great nuggets of wisdom about Customer Data Integration, Business Intelligence and Master Data Management.
Another blog that I like is by Steve Sarsfield at Trillium. It has some good content on Data Governance and Data Quality. You can find it at Data Quality Insider.
One of my favorite blog’s is written by Andy Hayler, an industry expert and the founder of Kalido, who has written quite a few good pieces on MDM at Andy on Enterprise Software.
I’ll continue this in “My Favorite MDM-Related Web Sites (Part 2)”.
Tracking and Managing Corporate Hierarchies
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Here’s a great video that illustrates the difficulties in tracking and managing corporate hierarchies:
As the video shows, in today’s acquisition-heavy environment, it’s pretty tough to keep track of all the M&A activity in your customer base. As they say at the ballpark, “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard”.
Having worked for D&B in my previous life, I know they do a good job in maintaining the most important corporate hierarchies, with over 8.7 million company records linked to the appropriate family tree. D&B’s not perfect, but they do try pretty hard. If corporate hierarchies are important to your MDM initiative, think about including D&B early in your planning process.
And thanks to my friends Jack Dally from Transitions [2], and Mani Kumar Manda from Rhapsody Technologies for pointing me to this video.
Next Week’s DIG Conference
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I’m really looking forward to speaking at next week’s Decisions, Information and Governance conference in Las Vegas, sponsored by The Palladium Group.
And I spoke earlier this week at the New England Oracle SOA Users Group, talking about Master Data Management as a foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture.
MDM initiatives seem to be getting linked to Service-Oriented Architecture or to advanced analytics and business intelligence programs.
I think there can be a problem (but also an opportunity) for MDM in inserting itself between two things that used to talk directly from one to the other (an ERP system to a data warehouse) or (b) asserting itself as a predecessor task to ensure a better outcome (for example, when MDM is used to consolidate and improve the quality of enterprise data before people try to use it in analytics or business intelligence).
While I think it’s true that MDM is in fact needed at most large organizations, having to coordinate with an already-underway SOA initiative, or step back from a planned BI initiative and first tackle MDM, does complicate things a bit. So that’s the “problem” part.
The “opportunity” part is that, for organizations that have the foresight or the luck to tackle MDM first, it makes implementing SOA or achieving business intelligence success that much easier. There’s already a centralized repository of information on customers or products (or whatever domains have been mastered), and that information is proactively managed so that it’s trusted to be accurate, complete, timely and consistent.
Whichever situation your organization is in (tackling MDM first or building it into something else like SOA or advanced analytics), spend the time to develop a workable MDM strategy, using a holistic approach that addresses people, process, technology and information. By all means include an MDM hub in your planning, but make sure you also plan for business process management or sophisticated integration, as well as built-in or bolted-on data quality and enrichment capabilities. And be sure to build a data governance framework around your MDM initiative.
I’ll write a trip report after next week’s DIG conference, to let you know what I thought of the conference itself and whether I got lucky at the tables!
Perspectives on the MDM Market
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In this article, we’ll give some perspective on the current state of the Master Data Management (MDM) market.
Well-meaning skeptics have raised doubts about whether MDM initiatives have long-term viability, sufficient ROI or in fact, are just another system. This skepticism is, of course, understandable.
Every major new type of enterprise technology, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) goes through an adoption cycle, with early enthusiasm leading to the “Trough of Disillusionment” and eventually, the “Plateau of Productivity”. For more information, see Gartner’s definition of Hype Cycles.
And if you look at the history of MDM solutions over the past few years, the space was very fragmented, initially populated mainly by data quality and matching vendors.
But more recently, some innovations have come together in the MDM space so that it’s starting to offer real value to mainstream companies, not just early adopters.
There have been several innovations on the IT architecture front, such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), plus new analytics capabilities, improved tools to facilitate data stewardship and more mature MDM hub platforms. All this adds up to a fast-changing landscape.
To add to the momentum, the top enterprise software players (like Oracle, IBM and SAP) have jumped feet first onto the MDM bandwagon, joining the best-of-breed players (like Purisma, Siperian and Initiate Systems) who helped launch the space, giving rise to a whole new ecosystem of system integrators, data service providers and an increasing trend toward global solutions beyond North America.
This growing ecosystem is driving significant growth for the MDM industry as a whole. There are exciting frontiers ahead.
For example, we’re already seeing some business process outsourcing relating to the creation and maintenance of an organization’s master data to an external provider.
At Hub Solution Designs, we’re excited to be part of the MDM wave of adoption from the very beginning. We see more growth, better solutions, and more organizations succeeding with MDM every day.
Please use the Comment button to let us know what you think about the trend towards outsourced data stewardship.
Building the Business Case (Part 4) – Gaining Alignment
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In the previous installments of this series, we covered three key drivers for building your business case: Risk Management, Cost Reduction, and Revenue Growth.
Now, we’ll review the importance of and the process for gaining organizational alignment with your strategy.
When you’re building support for your business case, it’s critical to gain alignment at all levels of the organization throughout the whole process. Making the case for an information management strategy cannot rest with only one executive. And it can’t be the brainchild of IT only, or lack executive sponsorship altogether.
You need as many areas aligned as possible. More than likely, a comprehensive information management strategy needs to consider all of the data streams across the enterprise (at some point), and will therefore be fairly time and resource intensive.
If you take a three-pronged approach to gaining alignment, then you’re well on your way to obtaining approval to implement your strategy:
(1) Get front-line employees and customers to identify the problems with the data. You should have been gathering their feedback and facts as you built your case. So when you can readily articulate that customers are frustrated with your company, or that your employees are performing workarounds, rework, or aren’t as effective as they could be, then you’ve got your “first-level buy in”.
(2) You need their individual management teams to agree that these issues exist. They need to agree that they’d be more effective in achieving their goals if they had a solution to their information problems. And most importantly, if you can get them to agree that an information management strategy should be a priority and they support the contents of the business case (which shouldn’t be too difficult if you had their support during the development of the business case), then these folks become your best allies.
(3) Have those management teams bring this message forward to their leadership. When the leaders hear, directly from their own people, that they should understand and support the business case, then your business case has achieved a level of credibility you wouldn’t have gained on your own. And your role then becomes one of subject matter expert, business case developer, and valued business partner.
I do recommend getting several executives aligned to the strategy. Because of the size of the undertaking, you’ll need several leaders to prioritize and support the effort. Providing headcount, funding and the time to deliver on the plan will be crucial from these leaders.
Once again, the more compelling your business case (whether it’s to comply with regulations, reduce costs or improve revenues), the more chance you’ll have in gaining attention and alignment.
Which brings us to the final point: set up your program so that small wins are achieved throughout.
Whether you need to set up prototypes, pilots, or small projects while you are driving the entire strategy over time (probably several years), you need to prove results. Otherwise, no matter how great your plan, the organization will lose interest along the way.
So, if you set expectations appropriately, have a good measurement plan in place, and keep communicating constantly with all levels of the organization, then you’ve got a great chance of succeeding!
Interview at MDM Summit on DMRadio
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I was interviewed recently at the Spring 2008 MDM Summit in San Francisco.
DMRadio (which broadcasts weekly on DMReview.com) did a broadcast from the exhibit floor, featuring:
- Marty Moseley from Initiate Systems
- Christopher Dwight from Oracle
- Dan Power from Hub Solution Designs
- Justin Magruder from Freddie Mac
- Richard Pilkington from SyncSort
- John Smolarski & Anshuman Sindhar from Countrywide
- David Codelli, Sun Microsystems
To hear the interview, just click http://www.dmreview.com/dmradio/10001100-1.html, then click on the third “Play” button from the top.
DIG 2008 – Decisions, Information and Governance Conference
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A very interesting MDM speaking engagement came up recently, at the DIG 2008: Decisions, Information and Governance Conference in Las Vegas on May 13-15.
The conference organizer, The Palladium Group, says:
DIG is the foremost performance management and analytics conference designed to provide business leaders with the tools and insights needed to leverage information for critical decision-making, helping them to achieve breakthrough business performance. We step beyond normal one-sided lectures to spark open and honest dialog with our presenters. Sessions will be designed with ample time for discussion, ensuring each attendee is included in the dialog – a collaborative environment truly unique in the industry.
A few months ago, a good friend from my days at Parson Consulting, Curtis Horton, connected me with George Veth, because George and I both live in Hingham, Massachusetts. George was the CEO of Painted Word, a consulting firm that merged with the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative and ThinkFast Consulting to form The Palladium Group in 2005. George and I got together for breakfast in early March, and he suggested me to Palladium when they were putting together this conference.
I’m very excited about this conference, because Palladium really seems to understand the tight connection between “good information” (achieved through MDM), good governance (achieved through Data Governance) and “good decisions”.
A lot of people seem to be treating MDM in isolation, as a pure technology or infrastructure project. But we feel that MDM and Data Governance together are an important enabler for business intelligence and Business Performance Management.
So it should be an interesting conference, exploring three important themes: “Creating One Version of the Truth”, “Insights from Advanced Analytics”, and “Enterprise 2.0″.
I’ll be speaking on Wed. May 14th, after Dennis Newman, Director of Financial Operations at the Boston Globe, and David Roberts, CTO for Applications Services at the Central Intelligence Agency.
If you’re interested in attending, just go to http://thepalladiumgroup.com/DIG2008 to register, and you can use the “promo code” DIGHUB to get 50% off the conference registration.
If you’re a client of Hub Solution Designs and would like to attend, please contact us – we have a limited number of conference passes available as well.
Keys to a Successful MDM Program
Master Data Management (MDM) initiatives often seem to begin with the CIO and consequently, the implementation takes on a strong technology focus.
But in today’s article, we want to suggest an approach that’s more likely to succeed in the long run – tying the MDM project to solving an important business problem, and then getting the business to not only sponsor the initiative, but to “own” it.
Depending on your industry, there are key business drivers frequently seen in that industry. For example, in manufacturing, the key drivers are usually margin analysis, supply chain analysis, product profitability and customer satisfaction. In the software industry, license revenue analysis, maintenance contract revenue (new and renewals), support margins and customer satisfaction are the key drivers.
When you talk about how MDM may improve results in these areas, the business owners perk up and listen. So invest some time in understanding the corporation’s strategic priorities for the next few fiscal years, and then choose a small number of these strategic priorities as the key drivers to be tied to MDM.
At a leading software company, Marketing had recently undergone a radical overhaul. The new head of Marketing was swamped by the number of “mini-databases” that had sprung up, both within the department itself and within IT. For their launch of their new software product, he needed to know who his customers were – on a particular version, at a particular support level, and in a particular geography.
It took the Marketing department weeks to get that final list. As a result, the CIO stepped up and linked the MDM initiative’s success to specific metrics used by Marketing.
Marketing was then totally engaged in the MDM project, and that momentum carried right through the product launch. And Marketing even hired a data steward for ongoing data management.
Had it only been the Technology group carrying the burden of doing the MDM project, I’d bet the project would have fallen by the wayside and there would not be any surviving MDM program there.
The key takeaway is to link your Data Quality and MDM initiatives to your enterprise’s key business drivers and your executives’ priorities. Only then you will get the business to put their money where their mouth is. And only then will you be assured of a successful ongoing MDM program.
MDM Boot Camp at MDM Summit Conference
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At the recent MDM Summit conference in San Francisco, I attended the “MDM Boot Camp” session put on by Aaron Zornes and Ed Allburn with my colleague, Maureen Butler.
I’ve attended five MDM Summit conferences at this point, but never had a chance to catch the Boot Camp session before. My colleagues and I work pretty hard at staying current on Master Data Management, so it was interesting to hear what Aaron and Ed had to say.
One of the first things Aaron said was “the world is flat, so data structures and business processes must be flexible, and IT must be able to enable new business models.” I’ve finally gotten around to reading “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman, so I really liked the idea of tying MDM to the increased agility that enterprises are struggling to achieve in order to remain competitive and relevant.
Another tie-in was the extent to which many firms are now using mergers & acquisitions as a core part of their business strategy, and the degree to which Master Data Management is critical to enabling smooth integration of acquired companies.
Aaron did a great recap of the three classic “use cases” for MDM: Operational, Analytical and Collaborative, and reviewed the top five justifications for MDM initiatives.
He reviewed the “strategic planning assumptions” that the MDM Institute has published, covering the expected market maturation, momentum, consolidation and diversification; recent issues around budgets and skills; the importance of data governance; the architectural trends towards multi-domain MDM and service-oriented architecture (SOA); the move toward improved identity resolution, data quality and analytics; and the trend towards 4th generation “policy hubs” and enterprise search.
Maureen and I thoroughly enjoyed the session; it was a great way to kick off our three days at the MDM Summit. We’re looking forward already to the Fall 2008 MDM Summit at the New York Hilton (Oct. 19–21, 2008).
MDM Report from DM Review
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I just got the “MDM Report” newsletter from DMReview.com, and it had a good article by Jim Ericson on the MDM Summit held recently in San Francisco.
It also featured our article on “The Politics of Master Data Management and Data Governance“.
I thought Jim had some good insights, including:
- MDM (master data management) is a hot topic at Global 2000 companies
- MDM as a technology and practice is hugely underpenetrated
- Existing MDM programs are both focused and either very incomplete or fragmented
- While multi-entity MDM is becoming relevant to early and advanced adopters, the focus remains on the customer and the top line (with a strong nod to compliance)
- The cost of entry to MDM remains high and requires extensive pre-planning and governance strategies to be successful
- More enterprises are buying MDM solutions, while others continue to build on their own homegrown systems.
I really enjoyed the Spring ’08 MDM Summit, as always. We’ll be writing some additional articles about individual sessions and themes we observed in the next week or so.
Data Quality: an integral part of MDM
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In a bid to position themselves as leaders in the Master Data Management space, several vendors position their MDM platform as a complete solution.
The truth is that these claims are somewhat misleading. Some claim that Data Governance (a critical component of an MDM program) is built-in functionality. However, they don’t provide a Data Quality capability in their product. Today, I want you to think about the fact that Data Quality is an integral part of Data Governance and a successful MDM program.
Here’s the methodology we recommend:
1. Analyze the business problems that MDM will address
2. Define critical metrics for data and other business issues
3. Link the metrics to business problems
4. Measure results and quantify improvements
5. Communicate results and improvements across the enterprise
6. Secure budget for next year
In order to execute this methodology, it’s imperative that Data Quality measures and related workflows be part of the MDM platform your vendor provides. If not, consider a third party DQ tool to integrate with your MDM platform.
If you’d like to ask about some of the typical Data Quality metrics we’ve used in previous implementations, please contact us.
Haidong Song from Oracle at OAUG Conference
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I just attended a great session by Haidong Song from Oracle in the MDM track at the COLLABORATE 08 conference, being put on this week in Denver by the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG).
I’ve known Haidong for several years, from my “previous life” at D&B, where I managed D&B’s alliance relationship with Oracle.
He made several great points that resonated with me:
- “MDM is the foundation for all of the other product areas and modules”
- “Poor Data Quality is the #1 Enemy of MDM”
- “Somehow, data has been left out – an afterthought – but if you don’t focus on the data, you’ll have issues”
- “Technology can actually magnify the problem if you propagate bad data across the enterprise”
- “Master data is in a constant state of flux” (what I call the ‘data decay’ problem)
- “Master data changes at a rate of 2% per month on average, so after 2 years, nearly half your data is obsolete or suspect”
Haidong talked about why data governance is needed in the enterprise, and how data quality issues can be an inhibitor to application acceptance. He talked about helping clients to avoid large fines and bad publicity, and the need to formalize a data governance framework.
He gave Toyota Financial Services and UMB Bank as two customer success stories, talking about their situation and challenges, and the Oracle solution they implemented and the positive results they experienced.
And he used the idea of a “Day in the Life of a Data Steward” to walk the audience through Oracle’s new “Data Watch & Repair” offering for MDM. It’s a closed-loop process, consisting of “Connect”, “Profile”, “Assess” and “Repair & Monitor” steps.
He also discussed Oracle’s integration with Acxiom, a consumer content provider, and with D&B, a business content provider.
He ended by describing Oracle’s MDM solution as the most complete offering on the market today. At Hub Solution Designs, we partner with all of the leading MDM hub providers. But from my previous experience with Oracle’s MDM products, and Haidong’s session today, I am very comfortable predicting continued success for Oracle in the marketplace.
Evaluating MDM Vendors
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Today, we’ll talk about some criteria you can use to evaluate Master Data Management vendors.
Before you go into “evaluation mode”, it’s important that, on the business side, you first have your MDM strategy chalked out.
And on the technical side, you should have mapped your organization’s data landscape, completed some in-depth data profiling and documented your data requirements. Not doing these things can significantly reduce your chances of getting the right MDM platform for your company.
Some important questions you can ask your potential vendors are:
- Do they support multiple data domains? In other words, does their solution handle just one type of data (like customer), or can it handle other important types of data, like product information, as well?
- In what vertical industries do they have a strong presence?
- Is their solution service-oriented architecture (SOA) enabled? What services are available “out-of-the-box”?
- Does their product have workflow capability or an MDM methodology built-in?
- If hierarchies are important to your organization, do they have a flexible hierarchy management tool?
- What third-party data providers do they integrate with (e.g. D&B, Axciom, Trillium, etc.)?
- Is their solution used primarily for operational or analytical MDM?
- What’s the state of resource availability in the market (or at SI firms) to implement their solution?
- Do they have an integrated data quality engine for standardization, matching and measurement purposes?
- Lastly, are they easy to work with in terms of response times, flexibility, and demonstrated alignment with your corporate objectives?
Answers to these questions may not be readily available on the vendors’ websites. But if your organization hasn’t started its software evaluation process yet, and you’d like answers to some of these questions, please feel free to contact us for our perspective.
MDM Summit Trip Report
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Last week’s MDM Summit conference was great, as usual. Attendance may have been down slightly due to the well-publicized economic situation. But there were still a lot of “end user companies” in attendance, either speaking or attending to learn more about this fast-growing field.
One theme we picked up on was the idea of “Master Data Management solving business problems”, rather than being a pure technology “silver bullet”. While having a central hub, married up to powerful data quality software, and integrated with the rest of the enterprise via the latest Service-Oriented Architecture integration tools is very definitely sexy, what’s even more compelling is looking for and solving the most difficult recurring problems that today’s large companies are facing.
Whether it’s driving increased revenue through better, more effective marketing and selling, or reducing costs by improving process efficiency and sunsetting redundant application infrastructure, or enabling smoother, more rational regulatory compliance, the promises of MDM are being realized in the leading companies who are implementing it.
This is not hype, people. While there may well be a “trough of disillusionment” in MDM’s future (or going on right now), the business and IT benefits are real, large and realizable. This is not a repeat of the wave of ERP adoption prior to Y2K, or the rush to implement a “me too” CRM strategy.
Any time you can help the business make more money, spend less money, and have a markedly easier time getting the bureaucratic monkey off its back, people in the business are going to notice and reward you for it.
I hate to say “the future’s so bright we have to wear shades”, but from our perspective, MDM is just hitting its stride, and does indeed have a bright future.
If you disagree, we’d love to hear from you via a comment.
Role of MDM and Data Governance in SOA
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As SOA (service oriented architecture) initiatives gain popularity, let’s look at how MDM (master data management) and data governance can dovetail with a SOA strategy.
SOA, although technically a type of IT architecture, is more of an integrated approach to building high-level services that are inherently reusable and scalable across various applications. High-level services are not consumed as end-point services themselves, but operate more at the business process level.
While composing the entity framework for a service-oriented architecture, a Data Governance Council should be an integral part of the SOA team. The role of the Data Governance Council is two-fold:
- Provide a comprehensive data map (authoritative sources, data flows and underlying data policies) to the SOA architects, and
- To plan and implement “Master Data Services” as part of the services available for consumption to applications within the scope of SOA. An example would be “Create Customer”, where sources, lookups, standards, business validations and enrichments are all built-in, and are available for applications across the enterprise to consume in a robust, auditable fashion.
So what does this do for an MDM initiative?
It provides a powerful platform to integrate the current business processes and to improve levels of data quality, to provide accurate, current and complete data within and outside the IT applications.
It also provides a central platform and process for various domains of master data (suppliers, items, etc) as they come aboard the MDM bandwagon.
