This Forbes interview of Chevron CIO Denise Coyne suggests that a 2010 focus for the oil and gas giant is data quality, although the code words employed scream Master Data Management:
"... we're going to create a pilot enterprise project to consolidate all of that information in one place."
"We have lots of data about people in one organization, another database about people in another organization. Consolidating that information to have one source of the truth, to be able to make faster, more competitive decisions more quickly, is a really important focus in 2010."
It is great that Denise Coyne has recognized the potential business value of improved data quality.
I do hope that this sentiment is not being driven by vendors/consultants pushing the purchase of a product (first) and a long implementation (second) followed by a realization that data requirements gathering is a necessity (third) and then a need for data governance practices (last, but really should be first)
As the CIO, she, of all people, should be aware of the potential complexity of migrating a federated, distributed organization with many organically-developed business applications (and probably thousands, if not tens of thousands of desktop data assets such as spreadsheets and databases) into "one source of truth." The "truth" is that it is highly unlikely that there is one source of truth. Rather, a reasonable focus on data governance and master data management would begin with understanding what business decisions are dependent on consolidated data, who in the organization is hampered by delays in serving reports based on consolidated data, and what steps can be taken to alleviate the negative business impacts. We have seen a number of initiatives focused on "single source of truth" evolve into data governance and data quality management programs when the delivery on the promises of the MDM tool vendors are impeded by the inability to simultaneously transform the organization via good information management practices.
Best of luck!
Meanwhile, my book on Master Data Management is now (Jan 20) on sale at 51% off the cover price, and I hope someone at Chevron buys one for Denise Coyne!
Posted January 21, 2010 7:01 AM
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We have seen that without people committed up and down the chain, buying an MDM tool doesn't solve the data quality problems. good points, David