Let’s say that you have successfully articulated the value proposition of incorporating a master data capability into a customer’s business application. Now what? If you are not prepared to immediately guide that customer in an integration process, the probability is that a home-brew solution will be adopted as a “temporary” measure until the MDM capability is ready. In reality, that means that the temporary measure will forever replicate the MDM services, likely in an inadequate manner.
The MDM strategic plan must provide an easy means for business processes to consume master data. One approach goes beyond the technical perspective of the consolidation functionality that the “system” provides. Instead, focus on data consumption and usability. This means having a “solution architecture” that is driven by aligning the candidate business process with its master data usage scenarios. More specifically, that means a process for:
- Documenting the business process and associated workflows.
- Identifying the points in the workflow where there is a dependence on identity information.
- Specifying the usage scenarios for master data (as described in my previous post).
- Assessing the various performance criteria for each usage scenario (such as data volume, simultaneous load, type of data accesses and queries, data synchrony and currency, and data access response time).
- Specifying the master data services to be integrated into the business process.
Importantly, that also implies the need for a process for implementing the specific master data services in ways that can meet the specified performance criteria. This is the topic of my next post.
