In my last post, I shared some thoughts about challenges associated with the lack of management for reference data, such as reinterpretation of semantics and the inconsistencies that crop up when multiple copies are used. All of the challenges I mentioned are indications of a need for improving the enterprisewide governance of reference data.
The first steps in establishing governance involve assessing the current state and putting a management program in place. That program should include a framework for documenting the values and meanings of reference data management in a way that can be aligned with development of policies for governing use and sharing of those reference domains.
In turn, one can envision the benefits that can be derived through policy-driven reference data management, such as:
- Improve data quality: The quality of reference data can be significantly strengthened by clearly specifying what is managed, identifying authoritative sources for both the definitions and the values, and determining where conflicting uses of reference data that are impacting business goals can be resolved.
- Reduce costs: Reduce operational costs by unwinding the numerous copies of reference data sets. Multiple copies of reference data domains require duplicated resources and multiples of the necessary effort for maintaining consistency.
- Simplify development: The complexity of code development can be eliminated or simplified by reducing replication of reference data sets, especially when there are hard-coded uses of reference data domains.
- Increase corporate consistency: Data harmonization will help determine when conflicting data sets are intended to refer to the same business concepts, and enables resolution of specific inconsistencies. Cross-system compatibility of reference data can be particularly helpful in ensuring proper data organization and aggregation for reporting and analysis.
- Assign authority: Identifying shared reference data sets is the prelude to solving the ownership challenge for reference data by increasing awareness of the value of reference data and identifying key stakeholders as the proper authorities for reference data management.
Instituting policies for reference data management will incorporate the specification of methods for enterprise metadata sharing, master reference data repositories and processes for agreeing to and publishing reference domain semantics, properties and hierarchies.
Next time, we will discuss how we can begin the governance process by assessing the use of reference data in the enterprise.
