Blog: William McKnight

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Yes, we are doing Master Data Management

How do you know if you're doing master data management/MDM? Well, first of all, it's unlikely that you're NOT doing some forms of managing master data in your organization. Master data is compiled for a variety of purposes in an organization, usually with limited sharing across those purposes and applications. Somewhere on the path of beginning to share, an organization will take a specific focus on that process. That focus may cause focuses (foci?) on any of the following:

- The quality of the data
- Widespread buy-in to the data
- Organizational ownership of the data
- Creation of workflow processes to collect multi-group input to the build of that data
- Apportionment of all enterprise data into managable chunks ("subject areas")
- Inventory of the various places that data is stored
- Ranking of the value of the various places that data is stored
- Creation of a unique database to store that data

At some point on this journey, an organization will come to the realization that there is an industry for this - the MDM industry - and adapt that terminology. This usually coincides with some budgetary allotment for the activities - the MDM budget of course.

Of course, that's one way a company comes to this realization. The other way is being exposed to the MDM industry and looking for its value to the organization, doing some top-down planning and beginning to engage these activities. Either way, each company should understand why they are doing MDM and where the ROI will come from. Though many will eschew this part of the process, it's important.

The (relatively) easy way to show the value is by showing how centralizing function will save on the myriad of pockets of like activity throughout the organization. I've blogged about MDM justification before. This blog is meant to lead into that one by elaborating on the MDM journey that many are going through.

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