Do you have a vision for master data for the next two years? Five years? Ten years? Do you have a "workable" strategy (you know, a strategy that will work for your company)? Master data should be the backbone of any organization, and part of any data strategy. It should feed business intelligence with important things such as customer, product, vendor, supplier, etc. where we can create effective analysis based on our transactional data. The quality and integrity of this data is vital to any organization that wants to be competitive.

Like any other enterprisewide initiative, we must have executive sponsorship. Execs must buy in and CHAMPION this initiative. This cannot be an IT solution! This has to be a corporate initiative that works for your organization where IT and the business play well together. It is your responsibility, as an employee or consultant, to make sure upper management is trained on MDM and can execute.

All issues must be escalated to upper management, with alternatives, for resolution (in this case ISSUE FLOW UP, haha). It is important that the business owns MDM (and data governance). This just happens to be where IT and the business user intersect, for the good of the corporation. We, the IT people, must educate and set expectations with the business on what can and cannot be accomplished with the existing resources and environment. IT is a participant in MDM and data governance; we do not sit on the sidelines.

So, get up and get moving. Make sure the business (and the corporation) is successful in its MDM and data governance endeavors.