getting started with master data management -...

Getting Started With Master Data ManagementNot well understood by business executives and often seen by IT as challenging, master data management (MDM) can help companies make better use of their corporate data by ensuring that information is accurate and consistent across all systems. In this e-book, learn about best practices and get tips and advice on how to structure and manage MDM programs.By MARK BRUNELLi

Gartner Explains How to Reach the Next Level of MDM Maturity

TDWI Solution Summit Speakers Share MDM Best Practices

Big Data Will Have a Big Impact on MDM Strategy, Gartner Says

True Hollywood Story: MDM Thrives at Sony Pictures Despite Low Buy-In

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Gartner Explains How to Reach the Next Level of MDM Maturity

artner Inc. has

plenty of advice for both beginner and more advanced master data man-

agement (MDM) practitioners that need to kick their MDM maturity levels up a notch.

Gartner analysts speaking in April 2012 at the research and consulting company’s annual Master Data Man-agement Summit in Los Angeles ad-vised attendees to remember that all MDM programs should be driven by clearly defined and measurable busi-ness objectives. They said that be-ginners should research and closely adhere to widely accepted MDM best practices—and closely track the busi-ness process changes that result from MDM initiatives.

intermediate to advanced MDM practitioners should remember to re-use proven MDM-related data gov-ernance and data quality processes

wherever possible as they expand their programs throughout the enterprise, according to the Gartner analysts. However, they cautioned that different departments within an enterprise may require different MDM tools. in other words, just one MDM software vendor may not be good enough for the entire enterprise.

“How do you make progress with MDM?” asked Dimitris Geragas, a senior director of consulting at Gart-ner. “it depends on where you are. it depends on where you want to go. it depends on where you’ve been. it de-pends on a whole lot of things.”

transItIon to MultI-DoMaIn MDM reMaIns a challengeGartner reports that many compa-nies are still struggling to expand their MDM programs beyond a single do-main such as product or customer—and MDM newbies Ganesh Prabhu

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cHApTER 1: GARTNER ExplAINS HoW To REAcH THE NExT lEvEl of MDM MATuRITy

and Paru Mahesh can certainly under-stand why.

Prabhu, an iT manager, and Mahesh, a data quality manager, attended the conference to investigate the possi-bility of launching an internal MDM program at their company, San Fran-cisco-based Riverbed Technology inc., which specializes in helping organiza-tions optimize their iT infrastructures and wide area networks.

Prabhu, who represents the iT side of Riverbed, and Mahesh, who works for the business side of the company in sales operations, are currently in the process of making the business case for MDM to company higher-ups. if the initiative moves forward as planned, they will begin by focusing on the customer master data domain and later expand the program to cover product master data as well.

The two expect that the process of expanding to multi-domain MDM will be relatively difficult, mainly because of all the complex integration work involved.

“integration between the transac-tional systems and the multi-domain MDM [will be a challenge],” Mahesh said. “How do you build those insights? And how do you model the data so you can grow those insights?”

Mahesh expects to overcome those integration concerns by planning for the expansion well in advance and working closely with team members to anticipate potential problems.

Prabhu added that he is confident

the proposed initiative at Riverbed will gain approval because executives there seem to recognize the benefits of well-executed MDM processes, such as improved customer service and inven-tory management. Based on his experi-ences, he offered some advice to other MDM newbies who need to build a business case.

“One key thing is to find the real op-erational efficiencies that you will get out of this project, and some of the key metrics that will be available once the solution is in place,” he said. “Once you know the key benefits the business will have, it becomes a much simpler busi-ness case to make to executives.”

More tIps for IMprovIng MDM MaturIty levelsMDM is often thought of as an expan-sive and complex discipline, but that kind of thinking is largely counterpro-ductive, according to Geragas. it is better, he said, to think of MDM as a simple program—or a series of incre-mental programs that speak directly to the business value they provide.

“The path of improving your matu-rity is about killing MDM as a disci-pline and starting MDM as a program,” Geragas explained. “MDM as a disci-pline only holds the promise of value, but the way you unlock this value is by deploying the discipline as part of the program. A discipline cares about do-ing anything and everything. A pro-gram only cares about whether this


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cHApTER 1: GARTNER ExplAINS HoW To REAcH THE NExT lEvEl of MDM MATuRITy

is something that makes sense to the business.”

A discipline has to be monolithic, whereas a program is incremental and involves progressing gradually through phases, he said; in addition, the man-agement of a discipline is very big and cumbersome, while the management of a program entails specific tasks.

A company that looks at MDM as a discipline might say, “We are going to improve data quality,” Geragas contin-ued. But a company that looks at MDM as a program would be more specific and say, “We are going to deduplicate our customer data by 60%.”

“A program does not do everything under the sun. A program does just enough to satisfy the business,” Gera-gas said. “A program doesn’t talk about anything and everything that could possibly happen. it talks about just the things that will happen.”

gartner’s fIve levels of MDM MaturItyOrganizations that want to figure out just where they stand—and where they need to go from there—can refer to Gartner’s five levels of MDM maturity.

According to Geragas, organiza-tions reach the first level of MDM maturity when they finally realize that something needs to be done to improve the quality of master data and other forms of information.

Level two rears its head when in-dividual departments within organi-zations begin to get fed up with the inefficiencies caused by inconsistent data, and launch grassroots efforts to start fixing the problem. The dan-ger at this level is the tendency to address only the symptoms of incon-sistent data as opposed to the root cause.

At level three, organizations start to see “top down” support for MDM as company bigwigs become more concerned. Level four begins when an organization launches an enterprise-wide MDM program. At level five, enterprise MDM is up and running and supporting the business nicely.

“Funny things happen when you reach level five,” Geragas said. “One is that MDM will go away as a name because it is so ingrained in the busi-ness that people will not think there is a special name for it. People will think it is just business.”p


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TDWI Solution Summit Speakers Share MDM Best Practices

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everal Master data management (MDM) and data governance practitioners took to the stage at a TDWi

conference held in Savannah, Ga., in March 2012 to share their experiences and MDM best practices.

The panelists—who represented companies including student loan and financial services giant Sallie Mae, test and measurement systems maker Na-tional instruments and medical insurer Harvard Pilgrim Health Care—also answered audience questions about related data management topics rang-ing from logical data modeling to data warehousing.

They and other speakers at the TDWi Solution Summit, which was organized by The Data Warehousing institute, stressed the importance of being able to document the lineage of corporate data and of being consistent about creating data audit trails—both

potential outcomes of effective MDM initiatives.

it’s a point that Philip Russom, TDWi’s research director for data management, said he learned in a pre-vious job at a company that was inves-tigated by the federal government. The company’s lack of an audit trail eventu-ally cost it millions of dollars, according to Russom.

While he didn’t disclose the name of the business, Russom said it was a small company with about $12 million in annual revenue that had bought four competitors during a two-year period. “Based on that information, the Fed-eral Trade Commission decided that we were a monopoly,” he said. “But it’s kind of hard to think of a $12 million company as a monopoly.”

During the course of the investi-gation, representatives from the Se-curities and Exchange Commission showed up to examine the company’s reports. One of the first things the in-

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vestigators wanted to know was where the data that was used to compile the reports came from. Russom’s team had no idea.

“Because we didn’t have proper metadata, we didn’t have proper mas-ter data and we didn’t have a data lin-eage audit trail, [it took] three years for the FTC to conclude their audit,” Rus-som said. “in the end, the report said there was no monopoly.”

For Russom, the lesson was clear.“For anything that is going to go pub-

lic or anything that is going to be given as a financial statement—you better have airtight documentation and an audit trail,” Russom said. “And master data management is one of the pieces that will help you document the data.”

MDM Best practIce: pay attentIon to Data governanceDuring the panel discussion, Barbara Deemer, chief data steward at Sallie Mae, stressed the importance of the data governance efforts that go into maintaining an MDM program.

in her company’s experience, data governance supports MDM by giving organizations a formal way to commu-nicate, collaborate and establish the metrics by which progress will be mea-sured. it also allows organizations to formalize the practice of bringing peo-ple together and prioritizing projects.

“There is no question at Sallie Mae [that] governance is a key to ensuring that MDM and data quality happens,”

Deemer said. “The formalization of data governance allows you to estab-lish the communication change that you will need and the metrics that you

possibly need to get your MDM and data quality programs off the ground.”

Organizations that embrace the pro-cess of data modeling can also expect to be more successful in their MDM initiatives, according to Deemer and the other panelists.

One audience member asked the speakers for advice on how to handle pushback when trying to encourage her midsize organization to create logi-cal data models for data warehousing and MDM initiatives.

MakIng the case for Data MoDelIng In MDMJohn O. Biderman, an information ar-chitect at Harvard Pilgrim, said getting users to be more helpful when creat-ing data models is largely a matter of properly making the case and exercis-

organizations that embrace the process of data modeling can also expect to be more successful in their mDm initiatives.


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ing strong leadership skills. “i just have a view that you cannot do enterprise information anything with-out an enterprise data model of some sort—at least a conceptual model,” Bi-derman said.

When he first began working for Harvard Pilgrim, Biderman found that the insurer already had a well-thought-out enterprise logical data model and had also made great progress getting different business units to agree on the meanings of specific terms.

“it’s an incredibly valuable asset when you have the same business concept represented in many business systems,” he said. “it’s incredibly valu-able in MDM and [service-oriented architecture projects], and i think it’s sort of a vital part of data management.”

Christine McClary, a data manager with National instruments, added that the process of creating conceptual

data models has helped her organiza-tion with its “customer insights initia-tive,” a data integration project aimed at giving the company a 360-degree view of its customers.

“The whole process of conceptual data modeling and discussing the vo-cabulary and the relationships has been very fruitful for us,” she said. n

“the whole process of conceptual data modeling and discussing the vocabulary and the relationships has been very fruitful for us.”—christine mcclary, data manager, National Instruments


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actors lIke the rising popularity of social me-dia, cloud computing and “big data” manage-ment will each have a

significant—if not immediately obvi-ous—impact on organizations’ master data management (MDM) programs, according to Gartner inc.

Speaking at the consulting compa-ny’s annual Master Data Management Summit in Los Angeles in April 2012, Gartner research vice presidents An-drew White and John Radcliffe gave their take on the connections between MDM and big data, social media and cloud computing. They also discussed the biggest challenges facing MDM practitioners today and had several pieces of advice for companies that want to improve their overall MDM strategy.

“We think MDM is a central point for information management, and right now there are three forces that we see

converging on information manage-ment,” White told conference attend-ees. “you guys are in exactly the right spot in exactly the right time to both make a difference to your company and to add significant value.”

connectIng Dots Between MDM, eMergIng tech trenDsA growing number of companies are using technologies like the open source Apache Hadoop distributed file system along with traditional relational data-bases and data warehouses to derive valuable business insights from so-called big data sets, according to the analysts.

Big data comes in many forms, in-cluding Web server logs, location-based global positioning system information and machine-generated sensor data. While some definitions of the term include large volumes of structured transaction data, big data is

Big Data Will Have a Big Impact on MDM Strategy, Gartner Says

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often described as being unstructured or semi-structured. Organizations typi-cally use Hadoop to distill large data sets down to smaller ones that can then be fed into relational databases or data warehouses for further analysis. Big data management, Radcliffe said, is all about creating structure out of the unstructured.

Radcliffe said organizations’ MDM programs will ultimately serve to help “govern the relationships” between the internal data that organizations have been collecting and nurturing over the years—like customer, product and sup-plier master profiles—and the big data that is flowing in from external sources.

Big data also comes in the form of social network data. According to Rad-cliffe, an increasing number of organi-zations are looking to social networks like Facebook and Twitter to learn more about their customers and how they feel about particular products, brands or services.

it’s impossible to use MDM tools and techniques to govern the external creation and dissemination of social network data. But one thing organi-zations can do, Radcliffe said, is link internal customer master files to exter-nal social network profiles in an effort to learn more about those custom-ers and how to woo them. “MDM is not trying to govern the data that is in the [social networking] environment,” Radcliffe explained. “it’s more about identification and linking and bringing those two worlds together.”

The connection between MDM and cloud computing is a little more direct. Radcliffe said a growing number of ap-plication vendors now offer—or plan to offer—some cloud-based MDM and data governance capabilities.

He said many organizations are still concerned about security risks that could arise as a result of storing mas-ter data within a public cloud. But he predicted that organizations’ internal MDM programs will eventually serve as a central point for managing infor-mation in hybrid environments that are made up of both cloud and on-prem-ises applications.

“Cloud is coming for MDM,” Rad-cliffe said. “But it’s not there today.”

Be specIfIc when BuIlDIng a BusIness case for MDMTwo of the biggest challenges facing MDM programs today are hardly new, according to Gartner. Organizations continue to face great difficulty when it comes to building the business case for MDM. They face perhaps even greater difficulty in translating the business case for MDM into metrics that can be used to gauge progress after a program is implemented.

The key to building a solid business case, and eventually arriving at action-able metrics, is showing data—or mas-ter data—as it relates to a business process or business goal, said MDM Summit attendee John Ferraioli, senior vice president of enterprise data man-


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agement at Utopia inc., a Mundelein, ill.-based consultancy.

For example, a business goal might be reducing the number of outstand-ing invoices that have yet to be paid by customers. One way to tie that goal into an MDM program is to look at the accuracy of the master data contained within the outstanding invoices.

“if you look at an invoice and it has the wrong tax iD, or you ship the wrong product through supply chain ineffi-ciencies, the customers are not going to pay that invoice in a timely manner,” Ferraioli said.

The same principle holds true for inventory management. Ferraioli said many organizations will spend too much on inventory because they do not have their master data houses in order.

“Look at your inventory and tell me if you’re buying the same functionally equivalent product called eight differ-ent things,” he said. “is it a ball bearing or is it a bearing ball?”

By getting the enterprise to agree on the correct terminology for specific products, Ferraioli said, organizations can greatly reduce the costs associ-ated with carrying inventory. “you can-not achieve strategic sourcing and

spend optimization if you don’t have a complete view of the materials and your vendors,” he said.

MDM strategy Best anD worst practIcesGartner’s White ended the conference session by going over some actions that should be taken and some that should not be taken when embarking on an MDM program.

Some of the MDM best practices he mentioned include obtaining execu-tive sponsorship, tying the benefits of MDM to real-world business goals, getting buy-in and participation from business stakeholders and focusing strongly on change management and data governance. Things to avoid in-clude a lack of shared vision and com-mitment as well as weak or disjointed metrics.

Organizations should also start small, expand gradually and avoid try-ing to achieve enterprisewide MDM all at once, White advised.

“Executive sponsorship is very im-portant,” he said. “We’re not going to get very far with the amount of change we need in the business processes if we don’t have executive support.” n


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echnology profes-sionals and iT in-dustry analysts have repeated the advice over and over again:

The key to any master data manage-ment (MDM) initiative is sponsorship, funding and participation from the business side of the organization.

But if the business has little or no interest in MDM—and the program’s success or failure is riding entirely on the iT department—then it’s prob-ably time for unorthodox methods and some Hollywood-style creativ-ity, according to Eric iverson, vice president of television and intellec-tual property systems at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Speaking at the 2011 installment of Gartner inc.’s annual Master Data Management Summit in Los Angeles, iverson explained how his team imple-mented a hugely successful product MDM program that began with almost

no support from the business. iver-son said Sony Pictures’ business units eventually bought into the plan, but that took patience, flexibility and the will to “strategically create pain.” He also had plenty of advice for anyone launching a product MDM initiative.

“Gartner tells you how to do things the right way [and it] would be so awe-some if i had sponsorship, but that wasn’t our situation,” he said. “i want to give you some reassurance that you can succeed even if the cards are stacked against you and you don’t have all of those great things that Gartner is recommending to you.”

DIgItal technology proMpts neeD for proDuct MDMSony Pictures’ business units are in-volved in entertainment ranging from video games to screensavers and be-yond. But the media giant is probably best known for making, acquiring and

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distributing television shows and mov-ies. Among its well-known properties are the long-running TV game show Wheel of Fortune and box office hits like the Spider-Man series and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

With countless products or “titles” in the Sony Pictures library—and digi-tal technology changing everything from how movies and television shows are produced and stored to how they’re distributed—it became clear to iverson back in 2003 that the time had come to centralize management of the com-pany’s digital assets.

“At that time in our studio we had 53 different content management sys-tems that were managing digital assets in different ways,” he said. “it was like the wild West. People were all doing their own things.”

iverson and his team took stock of the situation and realized that, like many studios at the time, Sony Pic-tures did not have a clear view of ev-erything that was available for sale in its digital library. That’s when the prod-uct MDM initiative was born.

“We realized that an asset with no information about it is garbage,” he said. “The information about those files is important.”

The team had little support but de-cided to press on anyway in hope that new opportunities afforded by MDM would attract business units to the pro-gram one at a time. A centralized view of the digital catalog would lead to fresh ideas about how to package and

sell the company’s titles over the in-ternet and elsewhere, iverson argued, and that would translate to increased revenue.

“We didn’t even have space, [but eventually] got some sound editing room space,” he recalled. “At the be-ginning of our initial project, we would hear gunfire, lions roaring, chimpan-zees and anything you can possibly imagine. if you think that your MDM projects aren’t exciting, you should just do them inside a sound editing room.”

The iT crew at Sony Pictures be-gan the work of creating a centralized product master file while simultane-ously working on a major—and bet-ter-funded—SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software implementa-tion. Early on, the team decided to use standard interfaces and a loosely cou-pled publish/subscribe method to help ensure that future integrations with individual business units went smoothly.

SAP’s ERP system has the ability to assign items a “title-level financial code” that is used to help identify any important financial information about a product that salespeople need to know when closing deals. iverson said many studios have opted to let that financial code number double as the product identification number in MDM systems. But Sony Pictures went an-other way.

The team decided that its new appli-cation would create separate financial

cHApTER 4: TRuE HollyWooD SToRy: MDM THRIvES AT SoNy pIcTuRES DESpITE loW Buy-IN


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codes and product codes for individual titles—information that could be pub-lished to SAP ERP at will. iverson said one of the benefits of this approach is that it creates an incentive for business units to get on board.

“Money talks,” iverson said. “if they can’t get the financial number to bill any of their [accounts] or collect any of their revenue, they’re going to be very motivated to actually move over to the new system.”

the BenefIts of BeIng flexIBle—anD DIploMatIcAn important lesson that iverson learned while launching the program is that a willingness to be flexible and diplomatic goes a long way toward attracting buy-in.

Shortly after the beginning of the SAP ERP and intellectual-property MDM initiatives, iverson received word that Sony Pictures’ acquisitions group was getting ready to build its own system to manage acquired ti-tles. This presented a problem: “We said, ‘We’re going to be dead in the water if we don’t figure this one out because that is what’s not working here. We can’t have completely dif-ferent processes.’”

The acquisitions group was reluc-tant to sign on with iverson’s pro-gram because it had a very specific type of identification code for titles in its home entertainment cata-log. There was a fear that switching

to a new code would cause prob-lems in the company’s many legacy systems. But rather than attempt-ing to strong-arm the acquisitions group into conforming, iverson’s team figured out a way to bring its

identification numbers into the new system.

“if you’re flexible enough, then you can meet all those requirements,” iverson said. “And if you do that, then you can bring them on board.”

Fast-forward to today, and iverson said Sony Pictures’ product MDM sys-tem now connects to approximately 64 internal and external systems and includes information about more than 250,000 titles. it also indirectly con-tributed to $50 million in cost savings and new revenue and helped drive a tools automation project for the com-pany’s digital supply chain.

As the MDM project picked up steam, more and more business units bought into the plan. iverson said it was important to communicate effec-tively with the business side through-out the initiative.


there was a fear thatswitching to a new codewould cause problems in the company’s manylegacy systems.


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“We spent a couple of weeks [creat-ing] one chart explaining how every-thing was going to fit together,” he said. “Spend the time [explaining] why this works in a very compelling story in really awesome, short communica- tions.”

a gooD IncentIve: strategIcally createD paInAnd if that fails, a little pain can be an effective tool. iverson likened it to a scene in the classic baseball movie Bull Durham in which the veteran catcher, played by Kevin Costner, decides to teach his team’s rookie pitcher a lesson. Rather than ex-plaining why the pitcher should stop “shaking him off,” Costner’s char-acter tells the opposing batter to expect a fastball—and the batter knocks it out of the park.

“you can work really hard and lose a lot of ground by trying to fight some battles when the easiest thing to do is just let them experience the pain,” he said. “Let them have it, be-cause when you solve pain on a proj-ect, you’ll get a lot of buy-in to what you’re doing.” n

Mark BrunellI is senior news editor for SearchDataManagement.com. He cov-ers topics such as data integration, data quality, data government, databases and data warehousing. He can be reached at [email protected].

Getting Started with Master Data Management is a

SearchDataManagement.com e-publication.

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