Master data management (MDM) provides methods for unifying data about important entities (such as “customer” or “product”) that are managed within independent systems. In most cases, there is some kind of customer data integration requirement for downstream reporting, and analysis for some specific business objective – such as customer profiling for
Does it upset you when you log onto your healthcare insurance portal and find that they spelled your name wrong, have your dependents listed incorrectly or your address is not correct? Well, it's definitely not a warm fuzzy feeling for me! After working for many years in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and
I'm frequently asked: "What causes poor data quality?" There are, of course, many culprits: Lack of a data culture. Poor management attitude. Insufficient training. Incorrect reward structure. But there is one reason that is common to all organizations – poor data architecture.
Many data quality issues are a result of the distance separating data from the real-world object or entity it attempts to describe. This is the case with master data, which describes parties, products, locations and assets. Customer (one of the roles within party) master data quality issues are rife with examples, especially
In this two-part series, which posts as the calendar turns to a new year, I revisit the top data management topics of 2015 (Part 1) and then try to predict a few of the data management trends of 2016 (Part 2). Data management in 2016 The Internet of Things (IoT) made significant
In this two-part series, which posts as the calendar prepares to turn 2015 into 2016, I revisit the top data management topics of 2015 (Part 1) and then try to predict a few of the data management trends of 2016 (Part 2). Data management in 2015 Big data continued to make
Confusion is one of the big challenges companies experience when defining the data governance function – particularly among the technical community. I recently came across a profile on LinkedIn for a senior data governance practitioner at an insurance firm. His profile typified this challenge. He cited his duties as: Responsible for the collection
Wer es von Ihnen, liebe Leser, bis hierhin geschafft hat, herzlichen Glückwunsch! Und auch vielen Dank an die Engel, denn die rackern sich gerade ganz schön ab. Während wir uns innerlich auf den 24. Dezember vorbereiten und gemütlicher werden, drehen die Engel nochmals richtig auf. Heute überführt ein Algorithmus ein
Time. It flies. It does so whether or not you’re having fun or otherwise putting it to good use. To know where it flies, you’d need to watch. But most of us can’t make the time to watch. How we use time is important since it’s the one resource we
Yes. But since this post needs to be more than a one-word answer to its title, allow me to elaborate. Data governance (DG) enters into the discussion of all enterprise information initiatives. Whether or not DG should be the opening salvo of these discussions is akin to asking whether the
I've been in many bands over the years- from rock to jazz to orchestra - and each brings with it a different maturity, skill level, attitude, and challenge. Rock is arguably the easiest (and the most fun!) to play, as it involves the least members, lowest skill level, a goodly amount of drama, and the
In the movie Big, a 12-year-old boy, after being embarrassed in front of an older girl he was trying to impress by being told he was too short for a carnival ride, puts a coin into an antique arcade fortune teller machine called Zoltar Speaks, makes a wish to be big,
Utilizing big data analytics is currently one of the most promising strategies for businesses to gain competitive advantage and ensure future growth. But as we saw with “small data analytics,” the success of “big data analytics” relies heavily on the quality of its source data. In fact, when combining “small” and “big” data
Since now is the time when we reflect on the past year and make resolutions for next year, in this post I reflect on my Data Roundtable posts from the past year and use them to offer a few New Year’s data resolutions for you and your organization to consider in
I have participated in many discussions about master data management (MDM) being “just” about improving the quality of master data. Although master data management includes the discipline of data quality, it has a much broader scope. MDM introduces a new approach for managing data that isn't in scope of traditional data quality
With our recent client engagements in which the organization is implementing one or more master data management (MDM) projects, I have been advocating that a task to design a demonstration application be added to the early part of the project plan. Many early MDM implementers seem to have taken the
For a long time, master data management (MDM) practitioners boasted about their ability to build a 360° view of customers by aggregating and proactively managing information coming from various business applications such as CRM systems, ERP applications, and other operational systems. But was it really a 360° view? What about
In the last post we looked at the use case for master data in which the consuming application expected a single unique representative record for each unique entity. This would be valuable in situations for batch accesses like SQL queries where aggregates are associated with one and only one entity record.
Last time I suggested that there are some typical use cases for master data, and this week we will examine the desire for accessibility to a presumed “golden” record that represents “the single source of truth” for a specific entity. I put both of those terms in quotes because I
So much for a single version of the truth.
I have probably touched on this topic many times before: accessing the data that has been loaded into a master data environment. In recent weeks some client experiences are really highlighting something that is increasingly apparent (and should be obvious) for master data management: the need to demonstrate that it
Data. Our industry really loves that word, making it seem like the whole world revolves around it. We certainly enjoy revolving a lot of words around it. We put words like master, big, and meta before it, and words like management, quality, and governance after it. This spins out disciplines
Yesterday was one of the two times a year that an equinox occurs. From its Latin roots, the term equinox translates as equal night since, on the day of an equinox, daytime and night are of approximately equal duration. This occurs because during an equinox the Sun is aligned with the center of the
In my last set of posts I started to look at some of the challenges associated with enterprise management of reference data domains, especially as the scope of use for the same conceptual reference domains expands across databases, systems, and functional areas within the organizations. Recognizing the value of capturing
In physics, antimatter has the same mass, but opposite charge, of matter. Collisions between matter and antimatter lead to the annihilation of both, the end result of which is a release of energy available to do work. In this blog series, I will use antimatter as a metaphor for a factor
Sometimes you have to get small to win big. SAS Data Management breaks solution capabilities into smaller chunks – and deploys services as needed – to help customers reduce their total cost of ownership. SAS Master Data Management (MDM) is also a pioneer in "phased MDM." It's built on top of a data
In my previous post, I outlined the main components needed for a phased approach to MDM. Now, let's talk about some of the other issues around approaching MDM: data governance and the move to enterprise MDM. Where does governance come in? Throughout your MDM program, it's important that deep expertise
In my previous post, I used a game show metaphor for one aspect of metadata management, namely making sure table definitions are not ambiguously labeled. In this post, I will use name tags as a metaphor to discuss an important intersection of metadata management and master data management (MDM), an
In the era of big data, Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger noted in their book Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, “we are in the midst of a great infrastructure project that in some ways rivals those of the past, from the Roman aqueducts
In physics, antimatter has the same mass, but opposite charge, of matter. Collisions between matter and antimatter lead to the annihilation of both, the end result of which is a release of energy available to do work. In this blog series, I will use antimatter as a metaphor for a
