Hub Designs Celebrates Fourth Anniversary
Four years ago today, Hub Solution Designs, Inc. was incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as “a management consulting firm which helps companies to improve performance through strategy development, application of best practices, change management, technology implementation and other operational improvements”. That’s what it says in our Articles of Incorporation, and it’s not too different from what we’re doing today, four years later. Read more 
Oracle Customer MDM Webinar on August 17th
Once again, Hub Designs is joining with Oracle in a webinar, this time on Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 11:00 am Pacific (2:00 pm Eastern). Read more
Oracle Product MDM Webinar on August 11th
Hub Designs is pleased to be joining with Oracle in a new webinar on Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:30 am Pacific (12:30 pm Eastern). Read more
Recapping the 2011 Gartner MDM Summit
This is the fourth article in an ongoing series sponsored by SAP. Read more
Africom’s PROTEA Program
Our 300th article. After this year’s Gartner MDM Summit conference (May 4-6 in Los Angeles), Hub Designs sent a small team to a new client in South Africa called Africom. Read more
Hub Designs Clients Named To “25 Top Information Managers”
Each year beginning in 2010, Information Management magazine recognizes the best information managers and “people to watch”. Read more
Gartner MDM Summit 2011 Off to a Strong Start
The Gartner MDM Summit 2011 is in its second day. It’s off to a great start, with over 500 attendees. Read more
Launching Hub Designs Magazine
The Hub Designs Blog is becoming the Hub Designs Magazine! Read more
Hub Designs Sponsoring Gartner MDM Summit for 3rd Year
Next week, Hub Designs will be exhibiting at the Gartner MDM Summit for the third year in a row. Read more
Announcing the Hub Designs MDM Think Tank
Hub Designs gets requests pretty frequently from various MDM vendors to brief us on their latest products, “go to market” strategies, acquisitions, future directions, positioning, etc. Read more
A New Look for the Hub Designs Blog
Ah spring! Time for a new look here on the Hub Designs Blog. Read more
It’s Good To Be On The First Page of Google
Google Search Results Heat Map
I was doing some research recently on the search terms that bring people to the Hub Designs Blog. So I took a few minutes and found that for the most frequently used 40 search terms over the past year that I looked at, the Hub Designs Blog was in the Top 10 search results on Google for every single one, with an average position of Google’s search results page of third. That, to me, is amazing. Read more
The MDM Track at OAUG COLLABORATE 11
I’ve been a volunteer member of the Education Committee of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) for several years now, serving as the “track manager” for Master Data Management (MDM). Read more
“Data Governance In The Cloud” Seminar, March 24th in Atlanta
Writing for the Hub Designs Blog
Now that 2010 is over, we can share some readership statistics with you. Through Dec. 31, 2010, our total views since inception (in July 2007) were 101,078 (including RSS traffic).
We were excited to see that overall readership was up 14% in 2010 vs. 2009 (and 2009 was up 96% vs. 2008).
This offers some great opportunities for exposure for guest authors. Some of our most popular articles on the Hub Designs Blog have been written by guest authors such as James Parnitzke, Rob DuMoulin, Maureen Butler and Joan Lawson.
So, as we start off 2011, we’re looking for new writers – new perspectives, new talent, new ideas. We’re looking for people like you, our readers, who are (like we are) out on the front lines of master data management and data governance.
Whether you’re working through the education process with your team, or developing your strategic roadmap for MDM and governance for the next few years, or creating a business case to convince your senior management to fund your MDM initiative, or conducting a vendor evaluation, or in the middle of implementing an MDM hub – we want to hear about it!
By all means, sanitize your stories, and change the names of the guilty to protect the innocent, disguising the identities of the companies and individuals where needed. But share your lessons learned, your best practices, and your “things not to do” with the rest of the MDM Community.
If you’re interested in writing for the Hub Designs Blog, please check out the Author Guidelines first, and then get in touch using the Contact Us page on our web site.
We’re looking both for people willing to write on a regular basis, and for people looking to contribute a single or occasional guest article. Please include a brief abstract of your article in your message, and we’ll reply to everyone we hear from.
This is a “triple win” – you gain from the exposure your article will get on the Hub Designs Blog, we gain from working with new writers with interesting perspectives, and of course, our readers gain from the great content that we’ll be able to bring together for them.
So get your “thinking cap” on and start writing! Then reach out to us using our Contact Us page.
Hub Designs Blog’s Top 10 for 2010
Inspired by Crysta Anderson from Initiate, who put together IBM’s Mastering Data Management blog Top 10 Posts of 2010, I decided to put together a similar “Top Ten Posts of 2010″ for the Hub Designs Blog.
In our holiday greetings article, Thank You To Our Readers, we covered some of the top articles from the beginning of this blog in July 2007, and included some readership statistics, which we won’t bore you with today.
Our reports on MDM vendors like Oracle, IBM Initiate, Informatica (formerly Siperian), Kalido, and Orchestra Networks were very popular in 2010. And our series on MDM best practices, practicing enterprise architecture within MDM (by Jim Parnitzke) and on data profiling (by Rob DuMoulin) were also big hits.
Without further ado, here’s the Hub Designs Blog “Top 10 for 2010″.
- Oracle’s MDM Strategy and Roadmap – A look at Oracle’s MDM strategy and roadmap, from the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) COLLABORATE conference in April 2010.
- Building MDM-Powered Solutions with Initiate Composer – A description of Initiate’s new Composer product, which is a framework for building solutions on top of IBM’s Initiate Master Data Service hub.
- Master Data Management Best Practice Series, by Dan Power – A ten part series on MDM and data governance best practices, based on my presentation at Oracle OpenWorld 2010.
- Modeling the MDM Blueprint, by James Parnitzke – A six part series on applying important enterprise architecture concepts to MDM projects.
- Data Profiling For All The Right Reasons, by Rob DuMoulin – A five part series on data profiling and its role within MDM and data governance initiatives.
- Siperian Acquired By Informatica – My analysis of Siperian’s acquisition by Informatica, written on the day the news broke.
- Informatica Analyst Briefing – Hub Designs is regularly briefed by the major MDM vendors; this one by Informatica was about 2 months after the acquisition. A later briefing from October 2010 can be found here.
- Kalido MDM and AB InBev – I live blogged this at the Gartner MDM Summit during a session by Kalido’s President and CEO Bill Hewitt and Jonathan Starkey, the Director of Business Intelligence at AB InBev North America.
- Intersection of MDM, CRM and ERP – My article on Why Product Information Management in Information Management magazine sparked a short blog article by Andrew White of Gartner. The “Intersection of MDM, CRM and ERP” article is in response to Andrew’s.
- Orchestra Networks Enters Gartner Magic Quadrant – We thought it was newsworthy that Orchestra Networks, a specialized MDM vendor, was included in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Product Data” for the first time. Also, Orchestra Networks sponsored a white paper titled A Real Multidomain MDM Solution or a Wannabe? by Hub Designs that was published in September.
It’s been a busy 2010. I recently read the 2009 Year in Review from this time last year, and was exhausted just reading it, but this year has been the same – several conferences (Gartner MDM Summit, OAUG COLLABORATE, Oracle OpenWorld, Kalido), webinars (with eLearning Curve, TechTarget and Oracle Applications Users Group) and some exciting things to look forward to and update you on in 2011.
I’d like to to thank my wife and two boys for their unwavering support throughout 2010 – and my heartfelt thanks to the folks on the Hub Designs team - I couldn’t do it without you!
And thank you – as always – for your readership and support. Happy New Year!
Thank You To Our Readers
Well, another year has nearly passed, and I’d like to say “thank you” to everyone who has read and supported this blog over the past three and a half years.
Only one thing has made this blog possible: you. Whether you came here to learn about master data management (MDM) and data governance, or to follow the development of the consulting firm Hub Solution Designs, your support is what has kept us writing, with 265 articles to date.
We’ve had some great guest authors over the years, whose work you can see on the Top Series page. They’ve helped to bring great insights and ideas to the blog; I hope you take the time to check out their work.
Our MDM Best Practice series was very popular this October, with the series as a whole receiving more than 2,100 page views in the past two months. The shorter article on Ten Best Practices for Master Data Management, which led to the ten part series, has received 5,100 views so far.
Five Essential Elements of MDM and CDI remains one of our most popular articles, and Joan Lawson’s MDM and SOA, a Strong Partnership is in the “Top Ten” as well.
A couple of the articles we’ve written about Oracle have proven popular as well: Oracle’s MDM Strategy and Roadmap, and the First Look at Oracle Fusion MDM Hub. Jim Parnitzke’s series on Modeling the Blueprint for MDM proved so popular, we re-ran it this summer, as did Rob DuMoulin’s series on Data Profiling for All The Right Reasons.
Our article on the Hidden Costs of Duplicate Customer Data has received 1,175 total views over the past year, and How Master Data Management is Similar to ERP has been averaging 200-300 views per year for more than three years now. MDM and Enterprise Architecture (also by Joan Lawson) is a good reminder of the central role that MDM plays in the practice of Enterprise Architecture.
I hope you enjoy reading the blog as much as I enjoy writing for you. And I hope your holiday season is filled with family, love and happiness, and that you have a safe, healthy and prosperous New Year!
Kalido Virtual User Conference
Hub Designs is pleased to be a sponsor of Kalido’s virtual user conference, Kalido Connect 2010, which is being held on Tuesday, December 7, 2010. Kalido is expecting more than 500 attendees, and will debut its new product, Kalido Data Governance Director, at the conference.
Also, Hub Designs is participating in an analyst briefing on and demonstration of Kalido Data Governance Director on Monday, December 6th. We’ll try to write a brief article here on the Hub Designs Blog later that day to give you our first impressions, with a longer article later, once we’ve had a chance to learn more about it at Kalido Connect.
This year’s Kalido Connect conference will focus on helping companies to manage data as a shared asset by supporting the business processes of data management. Kalido CEO Bill Hewitt will discuss how those business processes will affect the world economy over the next decade, including the impact on virtualization, mobile computing and the shrinking role of enterprise applications in the workplace.
Kalido Connect 2010 also features a record number of end user speakers, including participants from GE Treasury, Imperial Tobacco Group, Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Endo-Surgery, MarketStar, Navistar, Univision and Visa Europe.
A panel of end users will discuss how they have developed a more policy-centric approach to data governance and organized their programs in terms of organization, process and technology. They’ll discuss what “success” looks like, the barriers they encountered along the way (and how they overcame them), the role technology plays, and the value data governance is delivering to their organization.
Best in class content has been prepared by Kalido executives, consultants, customers and partners to address both technical and business audiences interested in data governance, data warehousing, business intelligence and master data management.
The virtual conference platform gives attendees the ability to network, attend exhibits, collaborate and learn without the time, expense and hassle of travel. Attendees can watch a presentation in a packed auditorium, network with peers in the Kalido Connect Lounge, or visit fully interactive sponsor booths on the exhibit floor, all at no cost.
Further details of the agenda can be found at: http://www.kalido.com/kalido-connect-agenda.htm, and registration is available at bit.ly/kalido-register.
With Gratitude
It’s become a bit of a tradition at Hub Designs and on this blog to reflect on what I’m grateful for on Thanksgiving Day (see our 2007 and 2009 entries).
This year, I’ve got to start with my wife Mary. No entrepreneur has ever had a wife more supportive and understanding than she has been since I left Dun & Bradstreet and founded Hub Designs in 2007 as a consulting firm focused on MDM and data governance. She’s been there through all of the ups and downs, and has given me great advice and counsel through it all. I’m grateful too for our sons, Conor and Brendan – quite literally, the lights of my life.
I’m grateful to all of our clients – without you, of course, we’d literally be nowhere. The Hub Designs team works hard for our clients, but that’s because you inspire us, evoke our passions, and appreciate our efforts. We are grateful for your trust in us, and we will always do our best for you.
To everyone on the Hub Designs team – I’m grateful for your hard work and persistence. We formally launched our Thought Leadership practice this year and it’s been very successful, with several clients signing up for our services in writing white papers, conducting webinars, and providing guidance on using social media.
Lastly, I’m grateful to everyone who reads or participates in what we’re calling the Hub Designs Network:
- The Hub Designs Web Site
- The Hub Designs Blog
- The Hub Designs “Best Practices in MDM” Newsletter
- My social media accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook
- The MDM Community, a social network of MDM practitioners with 380+ members from 31 countries
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who reads this blog, our newsletter, my articles in Information Management magazine and The Data Warehousing Institute, or who is connected with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or The MDM Community. When I started Hub Designs as a consulting firm, I had no idea how much writing I would be doing, or how much I would come to enjoy it.
The reason I enjoy it so much, of course, is the great feedback I get from an engaged readership. I try to keep my writing authentic, honest and objective, and to put myself in your shoes. “What would I want to read, if I was trying to learn about master data management or data governance? What questions would I have?” So of course, it’s great when you write in with your actual questions. You’re always welcome to do just that – simply use the Contact Us selection on the blog menu.
So here’s hoping you had a relaxing, peaceful and happy Thanksgiving Day, with plenty of turkey, stuffing and family to go around!
Informatica MDM Tweet Jam
This is a transcript (lightly edited for brevity) of today’s Informatica MDM Tweet Jam. We hope you enjoyed the actual Tweet Jam and this transcript. If there were questions you didn’t get a chance to ask, please feel free to ask them via our web site’s Contact Us page.
Dan Power: Informatica MDM Tweet Jam like playing “stump Dan” – see if you can perplex, mystify and amaze me!
Dan Power: Actually, just kidding – want to have a good dialogue with everyone – would love to have a good MDM discussion.
Informatica Corp.: Right now! Join the #MDM TweetJam with @dan_power. 9am PT.
Dan Power: OK, the Tweet Jam is officially open!
Jakki Geiger: Dan, what are the most common concerns you hear about MDM?
Dan Power: IT people still seem concerned about how to involve the business and sell it to senior management.
Jakki Geiger: what advice do you give them?
Dan Power: IT seems to know that MDM is needed but sometimes can’t seem to get the business on board, and it can be hard to pitch to the C-Suite.
Dan Power: We advise building a compelling business case – getting outside help if needed – and recruiting internal business champions.
Jakki Geiger: What strategies to get the business on board have you seen work?
Dan Power: I wrote an article about that in a recent Information Management magazine and a blog article on Hub Designs Blog that accompanied it.
Jakki Geiger: We’ve seen IT successfully tie MDM to key strategic imperatives like improving cross-sell and up-sell=getting sales on board.
Ravi Shankar: One thing we have done to help IT is to quantify how much DQ issues can cut costs or increase revenue.
Dan Power: Getting the business on board means STARTING in the business – find out their pain points and recruit them to drive from Day 1.
Jakki Geiger: Others include onboarding channel partners onboard faster, which appeals to sales and channel operations.
Jakki Geiger: A huge driver has been regulatory compliance = appealing to those who gather data across the enterprise and create reports.
Ravi Shankar: I like what Charles Bloodworth of J&J said at Informatica World 2010 – “MDM is not just a project; it’s a discipline – a way of doing bus for us”.
Dan Power: Good points Jakki & Ravi – those are the pain points I’m talking about: increasing revenue / onboarding channel partners faster.
Jakki Geiger: One area I think is really going to take off is improving business processes = improve data to improve the process.
Jakki Geiger: One exec got buy in from exec team with “we need to manage our product supply chain and info supply chain equally efficiently”.
Ravi Shankar: Agreed – bus needs to be involved in MDM. Charles of J&J said bus involvement drove their MDM and data governance success.
Dan Power: That’s right – becomes a way of life – new discipline for the business – to have a golden copy of the data that they can trust.
Jakki Geiger: I agree with u. IT needs to understand what the business pains and strategic imperatives are, then evaluate “can MDM help?”
Dan Power: Product management and supply chain are just as fertile for most companies as customer data – so MDM is just getting started.
Dan Power: I’ve been talking to a lot of companies lately that have already done customer MDM and are now looking at doing product MDM.
Ravi Shankar: Product MDM: I see lot of demand for this from manufacturing companies. Just came from S. Korea – product MDM is hot.
Dan Power: Or even supplier MDM – in order to get global strategic sourcing initiatives off the ground, which can save millions of $.
Ravi Shankar: Customer MDM to product MDM – we’ve seen that with our own early customers – They leveraged the same Informatica platform.
Julie Hunt: How do you see MDM implementations evolving to take advantage of newer tech such as ‘cloud’?
Julie Hunt: And what advantages does the cloud offer to MDM solutions?
Dan Power: Good question, Julie – definitely see a movement towards the cloud – people don’t want to create tomorrow’s “legacy systems”.
Dan Power: So they increasingly are asking their vendors about cloud deployment options, even if they don’t rush to take advantage of them.
Dan Power: They want to know they’re available
Dan Power: To Julie’s Q about cloud, I think eventually we’ll see cloud deployments at lower cost than on-premise (particularly hardware).
Ravi Shankar: Let me outline 2 use cases we’ve seen @ InformaticaCorp.
Ravi Shankar: Use case 1: During peak times like holiday seasons, retailers can burst into cloud for additional capacity.
Ravi Shankar: Use case 2: Mktg mgrs can use self service tools to upload attendee list from event w/o having to bother IT.
Dan Power: The promise of cloud for me, is more flexibility as my business grows and if we have seasonal peaks and valleys of demand.
ocdqblog (Jim Harris): What do you say to companies that expected that from their data warehouse? How is MDM different from conformed dims?
Ravi Shankar: ocdqblog – welcome. Looking forward to a lively MDM discussion.
Dan Power: Good question, Jim. Most companies had unrealistic expectations from data warehouses, which ended up being expensive, read-only,
Dan Power: and updated infrequently. MDM gives them the capability to modify the data, publish to a DW, and manage complex hierarchies.
Dan Power: So to finish answering your question Jim, I think MDM offers more flexibility than the typical DW.
Dan Power: That’s why BI on top of MDM (or more likely, BI on top of a DW that draws data from an MDM) is so popular.
Ravi Shankar: MDM for DW – 90% of Informatica MDM customers use it for analytical use (in addition to operational).
ocdqblog (Jim Harris): Thanks Dan – Follow-up is do you see MDM as compliment or replacement for DW?
Dan Power: Definitely a compliment – fills void in the middle between trx systems and the DW – does things that neither can do to data.
Jakki Geiger: are you seeing this trend? Evolving beyond single customer view= visibility into 360 customer view w/products and channels, etc.
Dan Power: Yes, Jakki – people want more than a single view – they want multiple views on top of the single view.
Ravi Shankar: Siperian customers – We’re having a lively chat on MDM and data governance. Join in!
Ravi Shankar: Dan, what do you tell DW admins that DW provides their single view for enterprise?
Dan Power: I tell DW admins that most people in the enterprise aren’t completely happy with DW – that’s why there’s pain leading to MDM.
Jakki Geiger: Since the driver of MDM is the business, how are we getting master data into the hands of the business?
Dan Power: Good Q, Jakki – getting MDM data back into hands of the business should be built into the project – and the software platform.
Ravi Shankar: Compliance is driven out of DW – you need MDM for accurate compliance reports – Do you agree?
Dan Power: Yes, Ravi – Garbage in, Garbage out – you need quality data from the MDM system to feed into the data warehouse.
Julie Hunt: So we must advocate value of data governance as well as value of MDM with business, senior management?
Dan Power: I tell people to think of their initiative as a data governance project that happens to involve #MDM technology.
Dan Power: Not an #MDM technology project that requires data governance.
Dan Power: And to start the data governance piece about 6 months before the technology piece, if possible.
Julie Hunt: The importance of data quality = another layer to be advocated to the business and to management – show them the impact on outcomes.
Jakki Geiger: MDM is like a Ferrari. If you don’t use DQ with MDM, it’s like putting regular gas in Ferrari=sub optimal performance.
Dan Power: I’ve seen people try to do MDM without data quality – and it’s a disaster, like trying to run a submarine on dry land!
Dan Power: The fact is that #MDM and data quality are linked, just as #MDM and data governance are linked.
Ravi Shankar: Should data quality be integrated within #MDM?
Dan Power: Good question, Ravi – I’ve seen it both ways – a data quality engine integrated with the MDM platform or separate, both can work as long as the data quality tool is robust and the integration is solid, shouldn’t matter.
Dan Power: Most MDM platform vendors are not equally good at developing data quality tools – Informatica is one of the few that is.
Julie Hunt: How much does corporate culture impact success/failure of projects for #MDM, data governance etc.?
Dan Power: Great Q – corporate culture is a huge impact on success because data governance drives MDM and requires a lot of change mgt. So spend a lot of time on org. change in the data governance side of the #MDM initiative in order to be successful.
Ravi Shankar: Heard a customer say – “Don’t overdo data governance – do just what’s necessary” Do you agree?
Dan Power: I’d agree not to go overboard on data governance – balanced approach that’s right for your co. just enough to get the job done. Too much data governance can be worse than not enough – can be bureaucratic – the “data governance police”.
Ravi Shankar: Data governance applies to all data, but I hear that in MDM context a lot. Do you hear “master data governance” for MDM?
Jakki Geiger: Some argue shouldn’t call it data governance because the -ve connotation of “governance” thoughts?
Dan Power: I actually like that phrase – master data governance – makes it more clear and precise what we’re talking about
Dan Power: Because otherwise, data governance organization can get drawn into all kinds of weird things not related to master data
Dan Power: We need to recognized that data governance is (a) political, (b) controversial, (c) going to have an enforcement side.
Ravi Shankar: Now, do orgs do data governance first before implementing MDM or after they select an MDM product?
Dan Power: So in some ways, I actually like the term “data government” better – makes it more explicit what we’re talking about.
Dan Power: And it reminds people that we’re talking about governing the enterprise’s core master data – just like we govern other key assets.
Jakki Geiger: I think the challenge is that we’re still in the process of understanding that data is a strategic asset.
Dan Power: It’s ideal if they can start data governance before even selecting a product – so that the data governance org. can help w/ the selection process.
Ravi Shankar: Dan wrote an excellent whitepaper – “When Data Governance Turns Bureaucratic” – you can download it from http://bit.ly/ck2Gw8.
Dan Power: Truly competitive 21st century companies not only understand that data is a strategic asset, it’s how they run their business.
Dan Power: Forward looking businesses like Google, Amazon, Century 21, eBay, etc. realize that the data IS their business!
Jakki Geiger: “Data as strategic asset” is a fairly new concept. Visionaries recognize need 4 scale and intelligence=harnessing & analyzing data.
Dan Power: That was a fun white paper to write – looking forward to doing another one with the great folks at Informatica again soon!
Jakki Geiger: What I liked about Dan’s WP was the discussion around stopping the problem of data quality at the source.
Seth Grimes: Is data governance also (d) useful on balance and (e) capable of delivering ROI?
Dan Power: Yes, of course – or people wouldn’t be doing it. You can’t bring together massive amounts of data in an MDM hub and not have some type of governance framework in place. And if there was no ROI, it wouldn’t be happening.
Dan Power: I’m pretty familiar with Oracle’s data governance program, and for a huge company, it’s not real expensive.
Ravi Shankar: Welcome to #INFATJ – good data governance question.
Ravi Shankar: Successful Informatica MDM customers like J&J, Merrill, and numerous others have had strong global data governance orgs.
Ravi Shankar: Data is a key asset that many firms make a lot of money out of it – Bloomberg for e.g.
Ray Wang: RT @Ravi_Shankar_: Data is a key asset that many firms make a lot of money out of it – Bloomberg for e.g.
Dan Power: Good example with Bloomberg – welcome Ray!
Ravi Shankar: @rwang0 thx for the RT
Jakki Geiger: Can you create a career out of MDM? Many of our customers have extended MDM to address more and more issues in their orgs.
Dan Power: Good Q, Jakki – u can create a career out of it, I have for the last 6 years, but you’ve got to really have this in your blood
Ravi Shankar: Within Informatica customers, we’ve seen careers of several people take off b/c of successful #MDM data governance.
Julie Hunt: Thanks for great tweet jam!
Jakki Geiger: Thank you for participating! Looking forward to next time. Good luck to you all!
Dan Power: Thanks for joining us today – hope you enjoyed it! Check out the Hub Designs Blog at http://blog.hubdesigns.com.
Ravi Shankar: Thx for your insightful discussion and advice on #MDM data governance. Hope you all enjoyed it. Until next time!
Dan Power: This is Dan Power, signing off – have a great day everyone!
MDM Community – Join the Informatica MDM Tweet Jam on Nov. 11, Noon-1pm Eastern!
You are cordially invited to join the Informatica MDM “Tweet Jam” on Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010, from noon – 1pm Eastern (9-10 am Pacific, 10-11 am Mountain, and 11-noon Central).
What’s that? You don’t know what a Tweet Jam is? I’m glad you asked (because until recently, I didn’t know either).
“Musicians ‘jam’ by getting together and playing unscripted music, constantly working off each other, around a general theme. A Tweet Jam is the same concept, but using Twitter to have a fast-paced conversation around a particular topic. The idea is that one or more people, who are knowledgeable on a theme, are available to answer questions. Anyone can pose a question and anyone can answer.” (source: George Parapadakis’ “for what it’s worth …” blog)
So what is the Informatica MDM Tweet Jam?
That’s another good question. It’s going to be myself, Dan Power, hanging out on Twitter for one solid hour, answering questions, asking questions, telling jokes (well, maybe not telling jokes), and trying to help people better understand master data management (MDM) and data governance.
But I’m hoping my MDM friends (I keep a Twitter list of them at twitter.com/dan_power/mdm – if you want to be added to this list, send me a Twitter direct message) will join me and liven up the conversation, ask questions of course, but also answer them, add to the conversation, disagree with me on things, get a good debate going, give us all their viewpoint on some MDM topics, in short, make it a lively conversation among a good portion of the whole MDM community.
The official timing of the Informatica Tweet Jam is this Thursday, November 11, 2010, from noon – 1pm Eastern (9-10 am Pacific, 10-11 am Mountain, and 11-noon Central). Of course, no one controls what is posted on Twitter, so if you want to start early and end late, that’s fine. But I’ll be there at least for that time, monitoring and answering questions.
What do I do to follow the Informatica MDM Tweet Jam?
Just sign onto twitter.com and search for the terms #INFATJ #MDM (both need to be there). Anything related to the Jam will have these two hash tags in the message so it will appear in the search. Or you can use a popular Twitter tools like TweetDeck or Seesmiq and monitor the search terms there.
How do I join in?
Also very simple: you can post anything on Twitter – a question to the panel, a response to a previous question, a comment. As long as you remember to add the hash tags #INFATJ #MDM to your message, you are participating in the Tweet Jam. That’s all! No need to register, or sign up, or anything else. Just join right in!
I’ll probably post a transcript of the Tweet Jam on the Hub Designs Blog after we’re done, in case anyone does tell any good jokes.
Looking forward to seeing you on Twitter this Thursday, November 11, 2010, from noon – 1pm Eastern (9-10 am Pacific, 10-11 am Mountain, and 11-noon Central) – don’t forget the #INFATJ #MDM hash tags!
And here’s Ravi Shankar at Informatica’s take on the event.
Hub Designs Becomes Member of MDM Alliance Group
Recently, Hub Designs became a member of the MDM Alliance Group (MAG).
MAG is a not-for-profit community, founded by Pierre Bonnet, of users, software vendors, consultants and systems integrators who jointly invest their time and intellectual property in the development of a common best practice and procedure approach for the successful and sustainable implementation of Master Data Management projects. Pierre is also author of the excellent book “Enterprise Data Governance“.
Hub Designs believes in the community driven approach that the MDM Alliance Group is pursuing, and we’ve been following their progress for quite a while. Their web site, www.mdmalliancegroup.com, has a lot of good information and downloadable assets on modeling procedures, prebuilt data models, webinar replays, and more.
Hub Designs sponsors The MDM Community, but so far that has been more of a forum for people to ask one another questions, to write blog articles, to discuss topics and post upcoming events. Perhaps at some point, The MDM Community will become a way for MDM practitioners to share digital assets with one another. But in the meantime, the MDM Alliance Group is doing great work, and Hub Designs is proud to be a member of it.
Also, a section of our white paper which was released on Sept. 14th, 2010 has been published on the MDM Alliance Group web site. This section deals with the importance of a model-driven approach and proactive data governance to delivering multidomain MDM. You can read that section of the white paper here. You can also download the entire white paper.
Contact Hub Designs for advice on your MDM or data governance initiative.
Master Data Management Best Practice #10 – Use a Balanced, Holistic Approach
This may be the most important best practice of all: use a balanced, holistic approach – addressing people, process, technology and information.
Start with the people, politics and culture, and then move on to the data governance and stewardship processes, then the technology.
The recent Gartner “Magic Quadrant for MDM of Customer Data” by John Radcliffe had a great statement: “To succeed, you should put together a balanced MDM program that creates a shared vision and strategy, addresses governance and organizational issues, leverages the appropriate technology and architecture, and creates the necessary processes and metrics.”
Another illustration of the need to balance the technology with the people and process is a quote by the inventor and entrepreneur, Dean Kamen: “The technology is the easy part. Understanding what drives people – individuals, societies, what makes cultures clash – all of those questions are way, way harder to answer than how to solve any particular technical problem.”
This Best Practices series is based on a talk that I’ve given at the Oracle Applications Users Group COLLABORATE and Oracle OpenWorld conferences a few times. The talk has evolved each time I’ve given it, but one consistent theme has been “being an MDM evangelist”. I believe in the nature of master data management and data governance to fundamentally change the IT architectures, business processes and organizational cultures (how we think of the core data that we use to run our businesses). And I think corporate America is overdue for these changes.
We’re all consumers who’ve had frustrating experiences with companies trying to do simple things like changing our addresses, stop receiving extra copies of catalogs, fixing errors on credit reports, etc. And we’ve all had the opposite experience, when a quick phone call or self service Web portal took care of everything. What a difference in the customer service experience!
And in the business-to-business world, there are a lot of companies out there that would like to make decisions more quickly, based on reliable data, that would like to reduce their supply chain spend, consolidate their enterprise applications, increase their revenue by up-selling customers, get paid more quickly by making sure invoices go to the right address every time, manage credit risk for new customers, understand customers’ corporate hierarchies, cut their new product introduction life cycle in half, and so on.
These are the types of innovations that our companies desperately need to be competitive in the next decade. The economy is improving – but slowly. As an MDM evangelist, what improvements and innovations can you bring to your company? And can you use the balanced, holistic approach to make sure that the shiny, new technology doesn’t outweigh the people, process and information sides of the picture?
You’ll succeed if you recruit the right executive sponsors; invest in creating a data governance team; design your data governance processes, and communicate how the MDM initiative is helping the company to achieve its strategic objectives. And above all, be persistent. Don’t take no for an answer. The company didn’t get into its current situation overnight, and fixing it won’t happen overnight either.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – whether you’ve taken on the role of MDM evangelist in your organization, and if you need any help with it, please let us know.
Master Data Management Best Practice #9 – Don’t Underestimate the Complexity
One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein, who said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
This is very true in master data management (MDM) – where you’ll inevitably come under pressure to oversimplify. It’s not uncommon to have 20-30 source systems (or more) that have to be integrated with the MDM hub. And tackling other initiatives in the enterprise at the same time (like service-oriented architecture or major ERP or CRM upgrades) can increase the pressure. MDM can help with those other initiatives but doing several things at once may increase the overall degree of difficulty.
Remember, if you oversimplify or underestimate, you’ll be under pressure to cut functionality later. Satisfying important requirements will be postponed to later phases, and the business will be disappointed.
So watch out for the temptation to oversimplify. I had a client once who was setting up a customer hub with about five very complex mainframe-based source systems. They were oversimplifying by making the integration from the source systems to the hub one-way only. So new customer records would flow to the hub, but any updates or data quality improvements made in the hub would not flow back to the source systems.
I asked them what the plan was for those updates, and their answer was “manual integration” (which, of course, is no integration at all – just data stewards manually entering the changes a second time back into the source systems). We all know how that turns out – a great opportunity to synchronize updates and data quality improvements from the hub back to the source systems goes untapped.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that data governance can be disruptive to the business unless the business itself is driving the data governance program and it has been well-planned. Then, any disruption seems to be overlooked, much as you’d be willing to overlook a bit of mess from a home renovation when you were living in the house, as long as you got your dream house at the end of the process. But if someone else (IT, for example) tries to impose governance on the business, that’s a different story. Then, any disruption tends to be bitterly resented, since it’s being imposed from the outside.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – what you think of this tendency to underestimate the complexity of MDM projects. And I mean it this time – let’s have your comments and “war stories”!
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #10 – Use a Balanced, Holistic Approach
Master Data Management Best Practice #8 – Resist the Urge to Customize
Breaking news: As I was writing the article below on MDM Best Practice #8, I realized I should discuss the acquisition of Data Foundations, Inc. by Software AG. I was surprised by how long it took for the announcement to come out, because I first heard about this transaction in June. It seems to be a good acquisition for Software AG, which had previously acquired webMethods for its B2B integration technology. I’ve been talking and writing for a while now about the need to meld SOA, business process management and MDM. Some other analysts have said that this acquisition is no big deal, that the mega-vendors are probably not worried about it. But I think it’s a great sign for the MDM market that a larger player like Software AG, with revenues of $1.17 billion, which already has strong integration, SOA and BPM products, sees MDM as a compelling market to enter through acquiring a best-of-breed player like Data Foundations.
MDM Best Practice #8 – Resist the Urge to Customize
As the various MDM hubs mature, it’s getting easier to resist the temptation to customize. When I first started working with Customer Data Integration (CDI) hubs in 2004, they were a little “rough around the edges”, and sometimes customization was unavoidable.
But we’re six years further into this now, and the major vendors’ platforms are light years ahead of where they were in 2004. At this point, working with the vendor to improve their product in future releases is a better strategy than customization.
And most products allow you to modify the underlying data model – and the various flavors of the user interface – without touching the source code. This is a big improvement, because most of the times, the changes needed by the business are relatively minor – a few new fields here and there, some new reports of course.
One important thing to include in your evaluation of vendors’ platforms is how easy it is to “settle into” the platform – to make those minor changes and to adapt the platform to the way your organization does business. If the platform seems like it would difficult to adapt in this way, consider that a warning sign.
If you do have to customize, do it carefully; make sure your changes will survive an upgrade gracefully and are well documented.
One of the biggest risks is getting “rev locked”. The MDM vendors are still revving their products once or twice a year, so you don’t want to get stuck on an older version. I had one client that was told by their vendor that their technical problems were fixed in the latest release. Unfortunately, they were told by their internal team that the earliest they’d be able to upgrade to that release would be in about 18 months!
One way to avoid this is to build what I call “upgrade competency” into your project and your team during your initial implementation – so you already have one upgrade under your belt during your implementation life cycle. That way, the upgrade process isn’t quite so daunting.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – how your organization is dealing with the issue of customizing your MDM platform.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #9 – Don’t Underestimate the Complexity
Master Data Management Best Practice #7 – Create a Data Governance Organization and Processes
If there’s no dedicated data governance function, then no one lives & dies with the accuracy, completeness, timeliness and consistency of the critical information that drives the business.
There’s not much point in doing master data management if you’re not going to govern the data.
I remember attending an MDM Summit conference a few years ago, and hearing a pharmaceutical company admitting that they had spent 6 months implementing their MDM technology before they realized that they needed to have a data governance component – an organization with the accompanying processes to manage the quality and accuracy of the company’s critical master data. They essentially had to start their project over again after putting that data governance program in place.
The ironic part was that their system integrator partner ended up sponsoring the Data Governance track at the next conference.
Make sure you convince management of the need for a data governance team as part of your MDM implementation, because trying to do master data management without data governance is like trying to fly a plane with only one wing.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – how your organization is handing the intertwined nature of MDM and data governance.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #8 – Resist the Urge to Customize
Master Data Management Best Practice #6 – A Long Term Program, Not a Short Term Project
Today, we’re going to resume our series on Master Data Management Best Practices. Here are the earlier articles in the series:
- Start with the Need, Pain or Problem (Not “The Solution”)
- Active, Involved Executive Sponsorship
- Emphasize the Organizational Change Management Aspects
- The Business Has To Own MDM and Data Governance
- Use Your Best Project Managers and People
MDM Best Practice #6 is to think of MDM and data governance as long term programs, not a short term projects.
Start by understanding and describing your current state – where you’re starting from. Then define your “to be” or future state, and analyze the gaps between the current and future states, and how to close them.
Work with the business owners to break the project to close those gaps up into a series of discrete, manageable phases, much as a software company will have a series of releases of functionality in their successive versions of their software over a period of years.
Spend some quality time planning – the time you invest will be repaid many times over. I recommend spending up to 15% – 25% of the total initiative in planning. Don’t forget, you’ll be breaking down silos and coordinating across multiple lines of business, functional areas, channels, geographies, and so on – and sometimes, these areas you’ll be coordinating won’t like one another very much. So you’ll want to allow for plenty of time to plan what will probably end up being a complex, multi-year effort involving a balanced initiative composed of both data governance organization and process and MDM technology implementation.
The other thing to keep in mind is that MDM is never truly “over” – you may reach a plateau or “steady state”, but there will always be master data coming into the company that will have to be cleansed, matched, merged, synchronized, published, analyzed and utilized. And there will always be more you can do – higher levels on the MDM maturity model scale that you can help your organization achieve.
So plan for an MDM “way of life” that continues on, much like Finance or Sales continue on, not a project that “goes live” and then is over.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – how your organization deals with the long term nature of MDM and data governance.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #7 – Create a Data Governance Organization and Processes
Master Data Management Best Practice #5 – Use Your Best Project Managers and People
This one may sound obvious, but as you staff your MDM and data governance initiatives, make sure you use your best project managers and people.
Make sure you can’t be derailed by opponents pointing to avoidable project management or organizational issues. You cannot afford to have this type of project fail, so focus on controlling scope, getting the requirements right, managing risks, and communicating effectively and often.
I’ve seen situations where clients have had simultaneous projects going on: MDM, data governance, CRM and ERP. Even though the MDM and data governance projects were the most crucial, foundational efforts, upon which both the CRM and ERP projects depended, the MDM and DG projects seemed to suffer from “brain drain” – where the stronger resources were getting reallocated to the ERP project.
This “brain drain” syndrome is a mistake – the technical complexity of MDM, breaking down the organizational silos, the cultural changes and other “soft stuff”, putting data governance processes in place across the enterprise, all of these factors argue for putting your best people on these transformational programs.
It may be “project management 101″ but don’t put your “B” and “C” players on your most important programs.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – what you think of prioritizing your MDM and data governance programs and putting your best people on them.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #6 – A Long Term Program, Not a Short Term Project
Master Data Management Best Practice #4 – The Business Has To Own MDM and Data Governance
As tempting as it is to start and finish with the technology, it doesn’t work.
One model that I’ve seen work very well is for the business to lead the data governance initiative, with senior management being involved through a Data Governance Council (which makes policy for enterprise data), with Global Process Owners handling day to day activities in their own functional areas such as marketing, sales, channels, customer support, and finance, and with tactical aspects handled by business data stewards and IT stewards, under the direction of the Global Process Owners and the IT Global Solution Owner.
This three level model (Data Governance Council, Global Process Owners, Data / IT Stewardship) allows the business to set direction at the highest level and coordinate across the enterprise, while still letting the process owners manage activities within their own functional areas. It’s important to break down the silos which are so common in most of today’s corporations, because silos breed the “islands of data” problem. Reuniting and reconciling those “islands of data” is one of the major reasons companies are doing master data management initiatives in the first place.
When MDM is driven solely by IT, the business may not understand it or buy in. In some cases, the business may not even realize MDM is there, if it’s buried too deeply in the “infrastructure”.
The hard truth is that MDM’s nature as an ongoing program means that even if the initial project is funded by IT, the business may not pick it up in Year 2 & beyond – unless the business owns it.
I’ve seen many instances of MDM programs whose first iteration (driven solely by IT) failed, until they started over, recruited sponsors in the business, transferred ownership of the program to them, and took a more business-oriented approach to the initiative.
Please let us know – in the comments here, in the forums on the MDM Community or using the #MDM hashtag on Twitter – what you think of the need for business to own the MDM and data governance initiative.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #5 – Use Your Best Project Managers and People
Master Data Management Best Practice #3 – Emphasize the Organizational Change Management Aspects
Addressing the organizational change aspects of master data management (MDM) and data governance initiatives is critical to their success.
Outside perspective can be very helpful here. As I discussed in a recent article, “Org. Change and Data Governance”, organizational change management – as an applied discipline – is used far too rarely on MDM projects. They’re big enough to justify it, and they certainly involve enough corporate politics and cultural change to benefit from a structured approach to organizational change management. My firm, Hub Designs, applies org. change and communications strategy techniques to every project we do.
Most of what I know about organizational change management I learned from my friend, Dr. Burt Reynolds, who is now an Assistant Professor at Southern NH University. We first worked together on an Oracle ERP project at a software company in Massachusetts. One of the reasons that project was successful was the project leadership included a strong org. change component.
In MDM projects, a clear communications strategy that addresses all of the various stakeholders of the initiative, and communicates your messages to them using their preferred methods of communication, over the right time frame, will have a huge impact – particularly if you can tell those stakeholders how MDM and data governance are making a difference and helping the organization realize its strategic goals. Find every occurrence of increased revenue, reduced costs, and easier compliance and risk management, and pass those success stories on to the organization at large.
Please let us know – in the comments here, in the forums on the MDM Community or using the #MDM hashtag on Twitter – what you think of the need for organizational change management in MDM and data governance initiatives.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #4 – The Business Has To Own MDM and Data Governance
Master Data Management Best Practice #2 – Active, Involved Executive Sponsorship
MDM and data governance projects need strong executive sponsorship, more so than most projects involving technology.
To champion a change (towards managing master data as a true corporate asset) is going to mean significant cultural disruption. In most companies, that type of change is best driven “top down”.
Don’t try to start until this is in place. Work on your elevator pitch, reach out to senior management and educate them on master data management, and work on recruiting your executive sponsors.
MDM and data governance programs are typically not very successful from the “bottom up”. They may start that way, and even show a few small wins, but you’ve got to get the “C suite” interested and engaged at some point in order to get the budget money and the political “juice” you’ll need.
Don’t forget that data governance is largely a political function. I’ve always liked Jill Dyche’s definition of data governance: “Data governance is the decision-rights and policymaking for corporate data, while data management is the tactical execution of those policies.”
When you see the word “decision rights” and “policymaking” next to the words “corporate data”, you know that you’re dealing with an area that is more political than technological. But we need to embrace that, for that is the reality of data governance (or as my friends at Evaxyx in the UK like to call it, “data government”).
And if you think that anything in the enterprise can succeed that is so strongly political without the explicit and continuing support of senior management, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’m dying to sell you.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – what you think of the political nature of data governance and the need for active, involved executive sponsorship of MDM projects.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #3 – Emphasize the Organizational Change Management Aspects
Master Data Management Best Practice #1 – Start with the Need, Pain or Problem (Not “The Solution”)
The topic of “best practices in MDM and data governance” is one that I’ve been writing and speaking about for several years.
I wrote an earlier article on this in October 2007, and it’s proven to be one of the most popular articles on this blog, with more than 4,500 views to date. I’ve spoken on this topic several times at the Oracle Applications Users Group COLLABORATE conference, and at Oracle OpenWorld in 2009 and 2010.
My thoughts on MDM and data governance best practices have changed a bit over the years. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference, I co-presented with a couple of great people from Oracle, so I only had about 30 minutes, which forced me to focus and be more concise.
For those of you who couldn’t get to San Francisco for OpenWorld, I’m going to do a series here on this blog, looking at my recent Oracle OpenWorld presentation one best practice at a time.
MDM Best Practice #1 – Start with the Need, Pain or Problem (Not “The Solution”) – the “build it and they will come” approach really doesn’t work for MDM. I had one client where the IT group built a working customer hub, but couldn’t get the business interested in adopting it, and as a result, couldn’t get the funding to continue project beyond Year 1.
To avoid their mistake, make sure MDM solves some key business problems. Find out what your company’s overall corporate strategy is, and figure out how to tie MDM to delivering on that corporate strategy.
In particular, look at the data-related components of your planned and in-flight projects, then see how a centralized data hub can save money. I had one client where the “data components” of their ten planned and in-flight projects totaled about $10 million, and they calculated that by implementing a customer hub, they could achieve those same business goals for $6 million. After their implementation, which lasted 12 months, their actual costs were only $4 million. So they delivered savings of $6 million vs. the data-related costs embedded in the ten separate projects.
This may sound like an IT-driven initiative, but saving $6 million while still achieving the same business goals was a win-win that made the business team and the IT team look good.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – what you think of business-driven rather than IT-driven MDM and data governance initiatives.
The next article in the series is: MDM Best Practice #2 – Active, Involved Executive Sponsorship
Gartner Positions Stibo Systems on MDM Magic Quadrant
In yesterday’s article about the inclusion of Orchestra Networks in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Product Data”, I mentioned that Orchestra is not considered a “dedicated PIM vendor”.
One company that has historically been a strong player in the Product Information Management (PIM) space is Stibo Systems. Stibo is also developing a credible multidomain MDM vision. I’ve been following them since the 2009 Gartner MDM Summit and am impressed by both their product offering as well as their growing customer base (now up to 140 global organizations).
Stibo has now been included on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Product MDM for three consecutive years, and has been devoting more attention lately to marketing and analyst outreach. Their customer list is impressive and includes companies such as: GE, Sony, Siemens, Fujitsu, Sears, Office Depot, Harbor Freight Tools, Millipore, The Home Depot, W.W. Grainger and Thomas Cook.
On the product side, Stibo’s latest release, STEP 5.2 (available since July 2010) lets companies build and maintain a single authoritative view of product, supplier and location information for use across the enterprise. This ensures consistency across all phases of the information supply chain, and leads to cost reductions, reduced time to market and a faster new product introduction process.
As I continue to study the MDM market, and watch what the mega-vendors like Oracle, IBM and SAP are doing, it’s very encouraging to see so much innovation from best-of-breed vendors like Orchestra Networks and Stibo Systems.
To me, this indicates that the MDM market has a lot of growth and life in it yet, and the consolidation we’ve seen in the last couple of years, with IBM buying Initiate Systems and Informatica buying Siperian, doesn’t mean that the smaller vendors are finished creating great products and bringing them to market.
Please let us know – in the comments here or in the forums on the MDM Community – what you think of the latest developments in the master data management and data governance market and the latest “Magic Quadrant” report from Gartner.
