Is a monthly newsletter that brings you details of recent changes to commonly managed reference data tables. This way data managers have a resource that relieves them of the need to monitor the external code tables for changes.
Evolving from automation to information centricity
The industrial revolution started of by automating the tasks of the workers in order to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The same principle was applied when the first IT systems where introduced. Their main purpose was to automate a specific business process or activity and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this process or activity. The personal computer assisted calculations and document editing tasks and the ERP systems assisted specific resource planning activities.
Information exchange was often cumbersome and limited to an absolute minimum as the software solutions prime focus was the core task and not the integration or interfaces. A good example of this approach towards integration is the evolution of EDI protocols. Very few companies considered using integrated supply change EDI-item-grammar as their internal storage semantics. For most retailers the EDI is streamlined but then internally mapped to a multitude of different structures that support sales, logistics, marketing etc. This is clearly a missed opportunity for rationalising the complex landscape of the disparate applications.
Not only the information flow is hindered by this approach, as very often the ability to combine a set of activities into a consistent end-2-end workflow was not an objective of the technology solution. Another reason why chain processes such as Purchase to Pay or Order to Cash proves to be difficult.
The strong focus on the automation resulted in application silos that covered the needs of the business process but didnt consider the consistency of information across the different silos. The latter was often not an issue as the companies have often functional silos that fail to recognise the underlying information objects.
As the ERP vendors have levelled the playing field in many industries. The efficiency of the automation is no longer sufficient to obtain a competitive advantage. The software becomes a commodity and people move to a reuse, buy and only then build model. Having efficient automated processes is therefor no longer a key differentiator in most industries.
The focus shifts towards effective and efficient chain processes such as O2C (order to cash), P2P (Purchase to Pay) and more importantly in the context of information management the fact that we can maximise the insight that can be obtained out of the data at hand.
This information centric approach has to battle the years of process focus that led to a data landscape that is primarily application driven. The result is islands of data that dont align with the information boundaries. Duplication and inconsistencies are often the result. The answer to this challenge is the isolation of the information centric business functions and to expose these independent of any specific business process. The latter is exactly what the current wave of Master Data Management software solutions tries to achieve. They either solve the inconsistency issue through cleansing and transformation or they deliver the full set of create, update and delete services.
Even in an information centric model one can expect that a large portion of the business interaction will still be performed from a business process specific point of view: the purchasing department interacts with suppliers and the sales department deals with customers. Often a limited set of functions will understand that the underlying object being a legal entity or natural person is the object that is actually maintained. The true challenge is to identify the added value or risk involved when the link between the customer and supplier viewpoint is ignored by the organisation.
The building blocks for an information centric organisation
An information centric organisation can only be achieved if the data, regardless of its appearance, is managed as an asset.
You cant simply buy technology to instate information as an asset as it will require that all stakeholders act according to the relevant information policies. You cant achieve accuracy and trust if all steps in the information flow dont provide the required consistency.
COMPLEX PROBLEMS DONT NEED COMPLEX SOLUTIONS
Your business strategies suffer from poorly organised information
Proper information management and insights have become a linchpin that acts as a catalyst for the execution of your business strategies. Linking the information assets and the business strategy is the basis of your information strategy. If you cant define the correlation between improved information management and better insight there wont ever be a neither business case nor support for your initiative in the organisation. The value of information is very business domain specific as it always originates from the capability to use the information in support of a business function. There are many examples of business functions that benefit from increased information accuracy and trust. The role of the information strategy is to describe the cases where improvements will be beneficial and use this as the primary driver for the investment roadmap. Your Chief Data Officer can fulfil this function. An emerging role in many organisations as information was not necessarily recognised in the past. If its unclear how information could generate value you are likely missing the required innovation to make this happen. Rightfully the CDO often also has the mission to focus on innovative ways to monetize data or the increase the benefits obtained from the current data.
Your people underestimate the true value of information
The person creating the data is seldom the one that gets the most value out of it. A lack of common meaning results in broken End-2-End information chains, loss of value and business risk. Business process flows seldom correlate with information life-cycle flows. Not describing the information landscape results in a lack of understanding and lack of consistency in the accuracy requirements. The net result is total lack of trust and several remediation points and a poor operational efficiency.
The information architect would have to make sure we understand the ins and outs of the information flows and the relationship with the data stores. This landscape provides fundamental input to the information strategy as the architectural weaknesses become apparent.
Getting people to act according to the global information accuracy and trust objectives is very difficult is they are failing to see the whole picture. Often people dont handle the information appropriately as there is no apparent need in the context of their own business process.
You lack insight in your current information health
Think before you act. The current maturity needs to be taken into account when implementing change. Your approach should be issue centric and is not just copying the book. There is no point in changing for the sake of changing. The baseline of data incidents, quality and general policy compliance is a fundamental starting point for every information strategy. Organisations have the tendency to compensate for their inefficiencies. A formal baseline that is linked to the business benefits is a superb instrument to make the business case visible. When linked to the proper business drivers it also allows monitoring the effectiveness of your information strategy.
Your information is manageable but not sustainable
Every datapoint that is kept is obviously liability. Deciding to maintain information should not be a decision that is taken lightly. Depending on the update frequency it might prove to be expensive of virtually impossible to keep your data consistent with reality. There has to be clear business value when maintaining data. Having the right process, tools and policies to deliver the right quality level is essential for information life-cycle management. Often information management initiatives fail, as the scoping is not done properly. Focus is put on irrelevant datapoints resulting in huge budgets and very late delivery of the benefits. The information strategy needs to focus on the information that can be maintained at a proper accuracy and trust level with a cost that is lower than the benefits. Proper scoping and understanding of the benefits and the information quality decay frequency is the key to a successful information strategy execution.
You only have a hammer
Technology evolves at an amazing speed. Get the time to market and get ROI by using the right tools for the job. What capabilities are you missing? Investing in the right information management capabilities is required to keep the information correct at an acceptable cost and also to drive the necessary innovation that will create the data insight and business value. You information strategy needs therefore a technology capability roadmap angle to achieve the effectiveness that yields business benefits.
The logic should however not be reversed. Assuming that technology is the way out of every information management problem often proves to be the wrong angle.
Jan will present the full information strategy methodology with practical examples and guidelines in the two day seminar Defining and Executing Your Information Strategy that is schedule on 25-26 September 2014 and 3-4 March 2015 in London.
The data rich, information poor statement applies to many organisations. Big Data, MDM, Reference Data Management, Information Quality, Information Governance, Analytics, Appliances, …. There are many trends and buzzwords in the industry today that all try to address the fundamental problem of strategy driven information management. Its also very likely that you are able to put multiple ticks in the box for each of the hypes your company is jumping on the bandwagon. But are each of these initiatives working towards a common goal?
In this webinar, Jan Henderyckx takes you through a holistic information strategy framework that will allow your organisation to minimize information risks and maximize the value of one of your most fundamental assets.
To view this webinar click here.
Master data management zal als project over vijf jaar niet meer bestaan, het is dan gewoon onderdeel van goed informatiebeheer. Later licht hij toe dat het inderdaad een provocerende uitspraak is. Hij denkt niet dat bedrijven ineens alles op orde zullen hebben, maar dat mensen zullen begrijpen dat het master data vooral weergeeft wat op dit ogenblik prioriteit heeft.
Link to the entire interview
Information is the pulse of your organisation. If managed properly, is has the ability to drive you to be more efficient and effective, to achieve your goals.
The logo is simple/clean. We get the job done without any extras that serve no practical purpose other than to decorate. We get you from your existing darker issues to a place in the future, which is brighter and provides sustainable profits. You can distinguish a loop in the logo as the green future also serves as input to the existing processes. Hence the green dots on the i that are used as input. If you dont innovate, your improvements will disappear. Data quality deteriorates if you dont act on it.
With the cost of computing and managing data going down every year, your organisation is able to capture and store increasing amounts of data. At the start of computing we were optimising applications and data storage to gain bytes. Nowadays, we have the ability to store TBs. Given the shift in cost per TB the type of data that is kept moves from the formally recognised business events, such as invoices and orders, to informal events such as GPS locations, website click behaviour, etc. The vast amount of informal events have the potential of generating insight and delivering business value if the proper algorithms are applied to them. With the positions of cell phones we can improve the flow of traffic or with the use of a website we can improve the efficiency of our product MDM efforts by focussing on the fields that seem to have the biggest impact on the buying ratio. Not every company has tapped into this rich source of informal events. Failing to exploit this ever increasing source of insight is the true information value gap.
At the point your grandmother starts to worry about a new IT term you know that the top of the hype curve might have been reached. The level of hype is proportional to the amount of companies claiming the term and going to market under the banner of which they hope will facilitate the sales process and get the needed budgets. But are all the BIG-D solutions and services really a coherent thing? Clearly not. The velocity, volume and variety dimensions as introduced by Douglas Laney no longer cut it. Since the initial publication of his paper at Meta Group our ability to handle the velocity, volume and variety has increased dramatically through advances in both hardware and software. This proves that the term BIG Data is no more nor less than a commercial label for all kinds of data from which it is harder to get value.
When embarking on a MDM journey many companies struggle in deciding where to start, which domain or all domains, across the enterprise or in one department, business? Does it make sense to start by looking at the MDM landscape as one global concept or can you just lump all best-of-breed parts together and call that a strategy? Which characteristics should a proper MDM strategy have? Is the domain the main driver or should we focus on what benefits and capabilities the solution will bring to your business, in the short and longer term? Jan will share his insights and experience in how to progress your MDM strategy to reap the rewards required to support your business growth.
Collibra Thought leader session, 1 September 2013 by JAN HENDERYCKX
This session introduces a practical approach that extends upon the basic definition management and bridges the gap with the content improvement that is badly needed for trusted master data. Managing both the meaning and the representation in a business semantics glossary is a powerful way of implementing this concept. It also explains how to deal with one of the fundamental MDM challenges which is the distinction between the essence of the concept and the functional classification. You will no longer have to struggle with the question if its party or supplier and customer.
Managing the business semantics is a core activity to enable business alignment and achieve accurate and trusted information but its only an enabler for improved quality of information. The actual content of the master and reference objects will determine if the objective was met. The content governance is therefore an equal contributor to the end result. Solving the representation consistency can only be addressed if there is a clear view on the different semantical views of the master data. Properly addressing the functional classifications is another fundamental building block of MDM.
Listen to the presentation at the Collibra website
The participants of the Scandinavian Data Management Conference (22 & 23 March) chose Jan Henderyckx and Aleksander Wolodarski as the best speakers (sharing first place).
Congratulations, Jan !
Jan has donated the 5000 SEK (500+ Euro) prize money to Unicef .