By Rob Paller, Consultant
Charles Dickens wrote the classic story A Christmas Carol over 165 years ago, and since then, there have been countless adaptations from the stage to the silver screen. While watching Disney’s latest adaptation with my family, it dawned on me not long after Scrooge declared Marley ”dead as a doornail” that there was one adaptation of this classic that isn’t nearly as dead as Marley. It was when Marley came back to visit Ebenezer that this adaptation started to solidify.
In this adaptation, Ebenezer is played by the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Marley is the CIO, and Bob Cratchit represents one of the many white collar workers at this company.
This tale begins with the present-day departure of Marley from the company. The past decade had presented this company with the usual challenges: Y2K, September 11, the market meltdown, and lingering economic woes. The company had weathered most of these storms but faced an uncertain future—even after completing several successful mergers and acquisitions. Ebenezer was a frugal CEO, but even he knew that the current economic climate would be hard on the company. Even with careful planning.
Ebenezer was working late one night in December trying to plan for the upcoming year as the year-end figures were coming in. He realized that with several companies still reporting their information independently, it was going to be another long night. As each minute passed spent digesting spreadsheet after spreadsheet, Ebenezer fought to stay awake—but it wasn’t long before Ebenezer drifted fast asleep. He would soon be visited by Marley in his dreams.
Marley was shackled in chains, carrying the burden of every system introduced by a past merger and acquisition—only to be poorly integrated. Marley warned Ebenezer that if these systems were not properly integrated, if the data was not properly managed and mastered, and if they didn’t get a grip on their data governance, he could either risk being ousted by the board or losing the company under the weight of these mergers and acquisitions. To make sure Ebenezer understood the gravity of the situation, Marley told him he would be visited by three more apparitions.
The Ghost of Data Governance Past
The Ghost of Data Governance Past was the first to visit. This ghost would bring Ebenezer back to see how the company operated long before the mergers and acquisitions. While things were far from perfect, the issues surrounding data quality, compliance, security, and master data management were easier to address. This was a time long before many of these issues were on the radar of many CIOs. Back then, data warehouse teams did their due diligence to mitigate the risks associated with the lack of formalized processes and technology solutions to address these problems
As a result, there was a semblance of a single version of the truth and trust placed in the reports produced. But as the decade went by, the company grew organically, and through each merger and acquisition, the ability to integrate information became impossible. Ultimately, the company was left supporting federated systems that fed multiple warehouses and relied on multiple reporting systems.
Upon Ebenezer’s return to the lobby of his office building, he rushed to the elevators in a panic. Now that he had seen the 30,000-foot view of the path his company had traveled, he was scrambling to figure out how and where to start solving his company’s massive data disaster. Unfortunately, for Ebenezer, he would be visited by the next ghost before he could jot down a few scant ideas.
The Ghost of Data Governance PresentThe Ghost of Data Governance Present was seated at Ebenezer’s desk and offered Ebenezer a seat in one of his own guest chairs. The ghost laughed while looking over the stack of reports that Ebenezer had left behind. With a swipe of the ghost’s arm, the stack of papers flew through the air, landing haphazardly across the floor. The ghost went on to explain that it didn’t matter whether the reports were collated or not—they couldn’t be trusted any longer. The ghost only needed to bring Ebenezer back a few weeks to show him all the trouble that Bob Cratchit had gone through to finalize the numbers for these reports.
Bob scoured over the numbers—only to be forced to dive deep into the tables in the countless systems to validate the numbers. When Bob discovered what he thought was a data quality problem, there was no process in place to fix the data. The subject matter experts could only commiserate with Bob about the problems and had little recourse in solving them. When all was said and done, Bob’s effort required a 60-hour week every fiscal period. Before he had a single iota of confidence in the results. Before he could send them on to Ebenezer.
The ghost reminded Ebenezer that he had only witnessed a single day of Bob preparing these reports, and that Bob had been suffering through this for years. He was the lone analyst capable of producing these reports since he had been around the longest and understood the intricacies that each new merger and acquisition introduced. But Bob could only be the unsung hero for so long. Eventually he would burn out and move on. The thought that Bob could leave the company was a burning question that Ebenezer tried to get answered, but the ghost of Data Governance Present offered no affirmation of Bob’s actions. The ghost returned Ebenezer to his office to ponder an uncertain future.
To be continued...
Rob Paller is an expert at business analytics and database administration. Since joining Baseline, Rob has been responsible for developing a case analysis system to streamline the oversight of food assistance benefits, implementing a common citizen data model, and assisting in the rollout of a new public assistance data model integrating data from over 10 years of legacy with a new benefit eligibility determination system.
