preparing for a master data management implemenation

Preparing for a Master Data Management Implementation

IntroductionEffective preparation is key to ensuring the success of master data management (MDM) initiatives. First, your organization will want to understand what is involved with your MDM initiative, including determining what MDM is and is not. It’s critical that your business leaders are on board with your initiative, so that as you outline your business objectives for MDM, they will reflect the business’s priorities. You can then address critical questions that help you properly plan for your implementation. Once your organization answers these questions, you can start focusing on specific steps that will help ensure implementation success.

2 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

When you and your company choose to take on a master data management (MDM) project, you are making a commitment to develop, cultivate and maintain a perpetually attuned and active approach toward the most effective and sound data administration possible for your organization. MDM has become a necessity, particularly in regulated industries. One of the key reasons behind this is that MDM is essential to proper data management and data governance.

While an MDM project requires a large commitment from everyone involved, the value is undeniable to companies that make adherence to data governance a priority. MDM entails more than a series of broad-stroke efforts to make sure your files are easily accessible, and protected with firewalls. Those features are critical, but in MDM, you manage the finer points in data, including uniformity, accountability, accuracy, semantic consistency, and general stewardship. Attention to such minutia offers you easier access to your files long into the future, since you will not need to try to wade through inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies. These unchecked human errors can cost large chunks of time and resources for everyone involved in the search for a single document or asset, so it is worth it to put a system in place to help conform the data as a part of the company’s shared master data assets.

As you begin to plan your MDM strategy, you will look for the most uniform and consistent set of central data identifiers and unique attributes used by internal staff, client prospects, customers, suppliers, vendors, websites, accountants, and anyone else who might need access to the data.

Understand what MDM is and is not

MDM is quickly becoming a must-have, particularly in regulated industries.

What MDM is


What MDM is notBefore implementing an MDM project, IT managers must understand a few things to avoid during the process. Sometimes, in an effort to organize and streamline operations, it is easy to jump in too quickly and approach data management from the wrong angle. Preconceived ideas and assumptions can prove costly and counterproductive for your IT team and your business. Here are two misconceptions to consider from the outset to save time, delays, and resources:

• MDM is not another databaseBrian Berry at BlumShapiro offered a few insights on MDM, noting that many in the tech industry — especially those with little or no MDM exposure or experience — often fall for the illusion that MDM acts like any other database.1 Your MDM will have its own set of rules and best practices to help you design a clean and simple data infrastructure, which you and your IT team can run smoothly to make it easier for everyone involved with the data to access files in an instant.

• CRM and MDM are not one and the sameBerry points out that while many customer-relationship management (CRM) software packages tout their own MDM capabilities, you still need to create a separate repository for MDM where the data governance group can manage the data. This is because you do not want the data governance group to have to manage data in a process-oriented system like CRM.


Andy Hayler, in Computer Weekly, offers a crucial piece of advice as you and your IT team move forward in your MDM efforts, which is that your business — especially including each of your company’s leaders — needs to work with you in taking ownership of your company’s data.2 Data is everyone’s concern; it’s not just IT’s problem to fix. Passing the baton back to IT defeats the purpose of creating a universal system for master data. It is important that business leaders see data as valuable as any bankable asset in order for MDM to work effectively.

Make sure your business leaders are on board

Data is everyone’s concern. It’s not just IT’s problem to fix.


With your business leaders and IT team ready to work in tandem, it is important to sit down — probably during several sessions over the course of many months — and establish the objectives you collectively have for your MDM initiative. Prepare yourselves and management for a process that will, along the way and in the end, yield measurable positive results.

In order to achieve these results, you first have to define your business objectives. Here’s a list of one organization’s objectives as an example3:

1. All of the organization speaks a common and consistent language regarding data and information terminology.

2. A reasonable level of standardization across the MDM processes exists.

3. MDM processes are handled consistently across the organization.

4. The MDM lifecycle is effectively controlled, while allowing for speed and agility.

5. A group is in place to make key, critical business decisions regarding the data. This group is recognized, respected and utilized throughout the organization.

6. At all times, the data is at a balanced level of data quality (cost to achieve vs. benefit realized).

7. The master data enables effective decision making.

8. Data is a core capability of the organization.

With all this in mind, you can start working toward your goal of incorporating MDM into your business, making it an integral part of your company’s success.

Define your business objectives


• What do you need to do to achieve your ultimate goals?

• What sequence should you follow to achieve those goals?

• What resources will you need throughout the process?

• What benefits will you receive and when? Should you look for incremental and periodic results as benchmarks or wait until completion?

• What will this program cost?

Start with a core team to establish criteria and ask the right questions.

While everyone will ultimately become involved with stewardship of your MDM program, you will start with a core team to establish criteria and implement your plan. Once you have your team in place, start the process by asking these types of questions:

Address critical planning questions


1. Identify all sources of master data

Identifying all sources of your master data is an essential exercise that will jumpstart your MDM program. This step is crucial and may take some time, but making sure you cover all your data locations will help prevent you from needing to backtrack in the future. Once you start delving into your source data, you will probably discover multiple databases that you and your IT had no idea existed. You might also find many data redundancies right away, in addition to the more nuanced data duplications.

Once you and your team carefully analyze and answer these questions — as specifically as you can for your organization — you can start focusing on specific steps, such as the following:

Using the first step as a springboard, identify everyone who produces or uses your business’s master data. This step will help you manage your master data efficiently and effectively.

2. Pinpoint the producers and users of your organization’s master data

Focus on important preparation steps


Once you have determined data sources, you need a team to help you take that data to the next phase. These stewards will take ownership of the data and work with business to ensure that business goals are met. Try to appoint stewards who were the owners of or are familiar with the ownership of each particular master data source.

4. Assign data stewards

This team, or council, will have a textbook knowledge and a global perspective on the MDM program. You will entrust this group to work as a direct support for the steering and success of the program, reporting to you and your immediate team to quickly note deviations, omissions, and other issues, so you can work together to come up with strategies to make quick and effective corrections. You award these council members the authority to make vital decisions about master data, such as how long you will keep it. These critical team members also will determine changes to master data, as well as how you will audit that data. Select this team carefully since you and your team will need to make hundreds of critical data decisions during the process of MDM transition. Along the way, you will need a well-defined and trusted decision-making council to help come to agreements regarding data. The lack of a well-oiled governing body can slow down, obstruct, or even completely halt the MDM process, so choose this team wisely.

5. Create a data management governance council

Collect and analyze all the metadata within your master data. Your metadata represents salient information and key attributes about specific pieces of master data. In this step, you will deconstruct this data and figure out each piece’s attributes and meaning. Details to look for include the attribute’s name, type of data, allowed values, constraints and limitations, default values, dependencies, and with whom the data originated, as well as who is now responsible for it. Determining the owner of the data is the most important step in this phase, but it is also the most challenging.

3. Dig into your metadata

MDM models are available either as standalone offerings or within MDM platforms. Using one of these options, determine how to tune your MDM model to reflect how you want your master data to look and how you want everyone to interact with it. Look at various attributes of your data, including size, data type, and values allowed. In this step, you will also map between the current data and sources versus your master data model. Again, by working with a dedicated and savvy team committed to streamlining your data processes, you will come to the right conclusions.

6. Tune your MDM model


With an understanding of the scope and requirements of your master data at hand, you can establish the appropriate infrastructure to support your MDM requirements. This should be done with a thorough understanding of your existing IT environment in order to effectively coordinate with other systems that your MDM platform will eventually interact with.

7. Create your infrastructure

It makes sense to create guidelines to ensure compliance going forward. You will continue to monitor old source data – and maintain quality for any incoming data – for the life of your master data program. You will monitor and calibrate production and consumption of new data as needed as part of your ongoing efforts.

8. Monitor new data production and consumption

Much of your maintenance for the future will involve keeping key team players in place once you have achieved your goals for implementation of an MDM program. Your data stewards — usually people working on the business side since they understand the nature of the data as it pertains to the business itself — will work with you and your IT team to ensure governance and quality control of master data.

9. Establish a plan for maintenance

Key team players should stay involved, even after an MDM implementation.


Reaping the benefits of effective planningWe’ve reviewed the important aspects as you plan for implementing MDM. These include understanding MDM in your organization, ensuring business buy-in, establishing MDM business objectives, and addressing critical questions and specific implementation steps. Undertaking the effort to understand and address the important planning aspects for MDM will help enable your organization to minimize risk for your MDM implementation and ensure a successful outcome for both IT and business.

Do you need help getting your MDM implementation started?Innovative Systems has developed world-class expertise to help with rapid, accurate, risk-free MDM implementations. Call us to learn more about how we can help your organization succeed.

1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-critical-success-factors-initiating-master-data-management-berry?articleId=82754675122

2. http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Tips-for-master-data-management-best-practice

3. http://www.dataversity.net/8-goals-for-your-master-data-management-program/


https://www.linkedin.com/pulse

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Tips

http://www.dataversity.net

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