Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Join CIO Executive Council members and participate in the following live teleconferences:
* Planning for Succession:
Models for IT Leadership Development, June 23
* Youth in IT: How CIOs Can Engage the Next Generation
June 10
* Change Leadership at General Growth Properties: A
Pathways Leadership Development Seminar, June 25
Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!
April 30, 2007 — CIO — Years ago, a global manufacturing company lost a key distribution plant to a fire. The CEO, eager to maintain profitable relationships with customers, decided to send a letter to key distributors letting them know why their shipments were delayedand when service would return to normal.
He wrote the letter and asked his executive team to "make it happen." So, they went to their CRM, ERP, billing and logistics systems to find a list of customers. The result? Each application returned a different list, and no single system held a true view of the customer. The CEO learned of this confusion and was understandably irate. What kind of company doesn't understand who its customers are?
Unfortunately, most companies don't have a precise view about their customers, products, suppliers, inventory or even employees. Whenever companies add new enterprise applications to "manage" data, they unwittingly contribute to an overall confusion about a corporation's overall view of the enterprise. As a result, the concept of master data management (MDM)creating a single, unified view of an organizationis growing in importance.
Naturally, where there's a big IT problem, there's a host of vendors lining up with sophisticated technology that provide an "out-of-the-box solution." The rationale is that by plugging an MDM technology into existing applications (CRM, ERP, logistics, billing, etc.) you can build that one "true view" that will then feed consistent, accurate and reliable data back into these systems.
But, as early adopters are finding, MDM isn't just a technology effort. Although MDM technologies can have a dramatic effect on a company's performance, no software is going to magically solve your enterprise's data problems overnight. And at the root of this problem is poor-quality dataand how bad data is created.
Consider a recent report from The Data Warehousing Institute that found 83 percent of organizations suffer from bad data for reasons that have nothing to do with technology. Among the causes of poor-quality data were inaccurate reporting, internal disagreements over which data is appropriate and incorrect definitions rendering the data unusable.
Organizations must understand that improving their dataand building the foundation for MDMrequires them to address internal disagreements and broken processes. Staff must agree on exactly what constitutes a "customer" or a "partner," and how to resolve any disagreements across business units. Departments and divisions need to agree on hierarchies of customers and products and how to resolve duplicate records across sources. Rather than a technology-focused effort, the project becomes one of political strategy and consensus building.
| RELATED SOLUTIONS |
Just the basics, please. Sometimes we all need a refresher or we need to make sure our team and our colleagues are all on the same page.
Over 25 tutorials on everything from business intelligence to virtualization.