How to Build a Business Case for Your Master Data/Governance Initiative

Today, all organizations share a common problem. We know that progressive organizations are process driven. Many of the most critical business processes depend on high-quality data: customer data, product data, and location data, among others. These critical processes also depend on the relationships inherent in the data: relationships between the customer and the location or between the product and the customer, and relationships among the products themselves. These critical data assets and relationships are central to running a business.

Read more: How to Build a Business Case for Your Master Data/Governance Initiative -- TDWI -The Data Warehousing Institute

Master Data Management - Some Useful Links

Managing master data, part one

Master-data management – managing key sets of data centrally instead of in application silos – is becoming a element of information management. But where to begin?
By Mike Fleckenstein

Hit the Ground Running with Operational MDM

By focusing on an operational master data management (MDM) approach, one can achieve 80 percent of the value of a traditional MDM implementation with only 20 percent of the effort. The next generation of data integration and master data management tools will accomplish this by providing a virtual MDM registry via inline data services.

MDM is Not Enough - Semantic Enterprise is Needed

This article introduces the concept of semantic enterprise and outlines a connection between semantic enterprise and master data management (MDM) concepts. The article also shows that successful transitioning to semantic enterprise requires significant improvements in enterprise metadata and especially in business metadata management. It explains the importance of supporting an enterprise-level semantic continuum from both business and IT communities by committing to development of enterprise architecture tenets that would bring both communities to a more synergetic environment.
By Semyon Axelrod

Why You Need Master Data Management

The vendor hype machine is up and running, and master data management (MDM) will be in your favorite software salesperson’s messaging and in their quotas by the time you read this. That hype drives business for a while, but soon MDM will have to prove its mettle.
By William McKnight

MDM in the Real World

By now we all know about master data management (MDM) systems and how they can bring about stunning business results. We’ve heard how they generate and maintain an enterprise-wide “system of record” that contains the consistent, reliable information necessary to perform vital business functions across a large organization. And, we’ve heard how implementing a strong MDM strategy can increase revenue and profits, improve customer service, reduce time to market, enhance regulatory compliance and simplify reporting and business intelligence.
By Marty Moseley

Kalido Debuts its Business Modeling Tool - Free Download

Recently Kalido debuted its business modeling tool aptly named Business Information Modeler. This means that business modeling has a new home in form of this tool. Before people used to resort to all sorts of drawing applications from Vizio to PowerPoint for their business modeling needs. The good thing about this tool apart from slick interface that introduces gesture-based modeling, is its ability to connect to Kalido platform and import the model right into it, saving weeks worth of work. It can also push changes as and when it happens in the model itself.

Kalido also started a Google groups for this modeler. You can get a free copy of this tool as well as insights from seasoned business modelers if you join The Business Modeling Community Forum at Google. Worth a look for those in business modeling area.

TDWI Las Vegas

Along with some other colleagues, I spent considerable amount of last week at Vegas. We were there as exhibitors in TDWI World Conference. It was held in the customary Caesars Palace. While the actual conference goes on for almost a week, exhibitors part is restricted to couple of days. Two red eye flights and an exhausting schedule made sure that I was tired as hell by the time I landed back in Washington.

TDWI Las Vegas again proved why it is considered a marquee event in the data warehousing and business intelligence world. Conference was attended by a good mix of mid and senior level staff from companies across North America. Some were there just for fun, however a number of them were seriously looking for new vendors, tools, technologies and methodologies. We generated considerable attention being the only services company on display in exhibitors arena.

A few things stood out in this year's event;

1. Everybody is looking for MDM solution


2. Almost everybody has got some form of Data Warehouse in their enterprise, albeit not without any problems


3. Companies have data warehouses and business intelligence solutions though without any Enterprise Information Management strategy


4. Companies are not able to maximize the benefits of data warehouses since they can not use its data across multiple applications

One theme that is common across these issues is lack of foresight in implementing Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence solutions. It is time companies gave way to DW/BI 2.0. It is time that Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence implementations serve a greater purpose than just supporting reporting to upper management.

Our stay in Vegas ended with a dinner at Bradley Ogden hosted by our technology partner Kalido. Too bad we could not stay for the full course or else we would have missed our red eye.

Kalido User Group 2007

It's that time of the year again. It's time to get ready for Kalido User Group conference 2007. Kalido customers, current and prospective would have an excellent opportunity to learn from other Kalido customers who are driving business value from enterprise data warehousing and master data management solutions - whether in operational cost savings, increased sales, or improved business insight.

My company, Project Performance Corporation, also happens to be a Gold Sponsor for 2007 edition of KUG. Hence it will also be good opportunity for current and prospective customers to visit the partner pavilion where the latest solutions and services available will be demonstrated by PPC and other Kalido technology and systems integrator partner community.

So, see you all at KUG 2007.

No SAP DW, No Oracle BI, but Kalido. Why?

I am asked this question a number of times. I give the same answer that Bill Hewitt, Kalido's CEO and President, gave to Jim Ericson in a recent interview. It goes like this;

"All the ERP vendors are saying it's about SOA. SAP says we can provide everything: middleware, information management, transaction systems. Oracle says the same thing. What customer in their right mind wants to go back to buying every piece of their stack from one vendor? If you want to deliver your applications with a database flavor, then Oracle is a great place to go. If you want to deliver your middleware with a manufacturing flavor, SAP is a great place to go. But SAP has rolled out their second try at MDM [master data management], and it's failing because while they understand applications, they don't understand data. Oracle understands data but they don't understand applications. What we promote is maintaining separation between the five layers of your IT environment that move at different speeds: your infrastructure, your security, your information management, your applications and your user interface. Eventually, SOA is going to be the technology that brings all that together, but I don't think you should need to have your information management come out of your transaction systems or vice versa. What customers want is interoperability between the layers of the IT stack so they can make changes that suit their environment as they grow or shrink or change in other ways."

Managing Compliance with Master Data Management

DMReview published an excellent article on How Financial Services Firms are Improving Adherence to Regulations using Master Data Management. It says, U.S. corporations spent an average of $4.6 million implementing Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) section 404 controls in their first year of implementation, and Forrester Research estimates the five year cost of Basel II implementation for the largest banks to be $150 million. The size and scale of investment on compliance is forcing organizations to invest in technology solutions. It goes further by saying, considering that SOX, Basel II and the USA Patriot Act all share the need for reliable control of master or reference data, leading Financial Services firms are looking to master data management (MDM) as the foundation for managing regulatory compliance. By creating a centralized master reference hub, organizations can deliver the most reliable, complete views of key business data within their existing business processes and more importantly leverage these data assets within operational business processes to remain in compliance, adhere to various privacy requirements and simplify the reporting process.

Among all the new data technology initiatives, MDM is one that is getting a lot of attention because of its ability to make compliance and reporting a whole lot easier.

Think Big, Start Small

This is my second post in the series where I will go through a real life MDM (Master Data Management) implementation. The problem at hand and in fact generic to all MDM implementations is the presence of multiple operational and transactional systems. In this case however, it gets worse. As the cases progress from one system to another they are manually entered in the next system in the chain and hence all the problems. In our case there are four systems in all, w, x, y and z. Cases progress from w through z in that order. In each system cases are entered manually and these systems are as distinct and disconnected from each other as North and South Pole.

When starting any MDM initiative in such scenarios it would be tempting to put all the systems in project scope. But, that would have disaster written all over it. It is heartening to know that scope of this phase of MDM implementation has been scaled down to system y. This also doesn't mean that our vision would get so narrow that we would not even look at other systems. The right balance is to start the implementation from one system but the design should be flexible enough to accommodate remaining systems in coming phases.

Right now we are looking at data elements that are going to be part of the Gold Copy in this phase. In addition to that we are looking at data elements from other systems, so that we keep them in the back of our mind when we are working on the design and model.

Of all the problems in Enterprise Information Management MDM is one where taking it one piece at a time would be highly beneficial and effective.