Evan and I recently keynoted a series of seminars conducted by the SourceMedia and sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet. The seminar theme was Best Practices in Customer Data Integration, and the point was to show that really effective CDI doesn’t happen without rigorous data identification, matching, and enrichment. - Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week I attended a talk directed to data management professionals on the use (or rather, mis-use) of XML as an approach to data modeling. Having already gone through a tedious exercise to convince a group of colleagues that there was a difference between a data standard (as represented in an XML schema) and a data model, I was surprised to see this topic presented in that forum. But apparently, because XML is being actively used to represent data models, it is important to consider that just because we have a hammer, it doesn’t mean that everything suddenly becomes a nail. - Read the rest of this entry »
These days CIOS are less interested in the buzz-acronym-du-jour, and more intent on delivering good, clean, harmonized information to their businesses. Seriously. Look at any CIO opinion poll and each discrete item on the list of priorities has valid, clean information as its underpinning. Whether it’s SOA or SOX, CRM or CPM, data is the common denominator. - Read the rest of this entry »
Last week I participated in a symposium on data governance at the TDWI conference in Orlando. At the end of the track, I was on a panel and was asked about my thoughts for the future of data governance as a practice. I had done some preliminary thinking on the question, but while I was listening to the question being asked, I started changing my mind about my answer. - Read the rest of this entry »
Based on the priorities discussed in earlier blogs, management has decided that the following concerns (in priority order) are what keeps them up at night:
Let’s discuss the relevance of the data report. Relevance is a term used to describe how pertinent, connected, or applicable some information is to a given matter. This said, the data is only relevant if it truly depicts the requirements of the business user. - Read the rest of this entry »
I knew that the topic of data governance got butts in seats, but my recent European tour with DataFlux erased any doubts about why. Seems people know they need data governance, they just need some tips on getting it going.
The European executive briefings were held in London — a big shout-out to my old friends from the U.K. who showed up to re-connect and catch up — Edinburgh, and
Amsterdam. My topic was Data Governance: From Idea to Execution. In the presentation I warned against an organization-focused approach to data governance, and advised eager attendees to instead gear up for a data governance effort that was specific to their companies’ cultures and incumbent decision rights. (I know what you’re thinking, but it was actually way more interesting that it sounds.) - Read the rest of this entry »
Previously, we discussed quality concerns that upper management had with data and the quality of that data. In priority order, here were their concerns:
Let’s concentrate on the second concern; reliability of the data reported. Reliable means: - Read the rest of this entry »
As part of an MDM activity, I have been working on a task to harmonize data element metadata. Actually, I made it clear that this was a critical piece of the process that needed to be done early on, although it is not clear that the value is yet recognized by my teammates. Here is the issue: the process is being triggered as a rapid initiative to create a “golden copy” repository of a collection of data sets, but there is as of yet limited understanding that this creates a new set of tasks that did not already exist in the organization. - Read the rest of this entry »
The blog content appearing on this site does not necessarily represent the opinions of DataFlux
