MDM, Quality & Governance: More Vibrant Than Ever
By Philip Russom, TDWI Research Director for Data Management
This week, we at TDWI produced our fifth annual Solution Summit on Master Data, Quality, and Governance, this time on Coronado Island off San Diego. I moderated the conference, along with David Loshin (president of Knowledge Integrity). We lined up a host of great user speakers and vendor panelists. The audience asked dozens of insightful questions, and the event included hundreds of one-to-on meetings among attendees, speakers, and vendor sponsors. The aggregated result was a massive knowledge transfer that illustrates how master data management (MDM), data quality (DQ), and data governance (DG) are more vibrant than ever.
To give you a sense of the range of data management topics addressed at the summit, here’s an overview of some of the presentations heard at the TDWI Solution Summit for Master Data, Quality, and Governance:
Luuk van den Berg (Data Governance Lead, Cisco Systems) talked about MDM and DG tools and processes that are unique to Cisco, especially their method of “watermarking reports,” which enables them to certify the quality, source, and content of data, as well as reports that contain certified data.
Joe Royer (Enterprise Architect, Principal Financial Group) discussed how Principal found successful starting points for their DG program. Joe also discussed strategies for sustaining DG, different DG models, and how DG can accelerate MDM and DQ programs.
Rich Murnane (Director of Enterprise Data Operations, iJET International) described how iJET collects billions of data points annually to provide operational risk management solutions to their clients. To that end, iJET applies numerous best practices in MDM, DQ, DG, stewardship, and data integration.
Hope Johansen (Master Data Project Manager, Schlumberger). Because of mergers, Schlumberger ended up with many far-flung facilities, plus related physical assets and locations. Hope explained how her team applied MDM techniques to data about facilities (not the usual customer and product data domains!) to uniquely identify facilities and similar assets, so they could be optimized by the business.
Bruce Harris (Vice President, Chief Risk and Strategy Officer, Volkswagen Credit). VW Credit has the long-term goal of becoming a “Strategy Focused Organization”. Bruce explained how DG supports that business goal. As an experienced management executive who has long depended on data for operational excellence, Bruce recounted many actionable tips for aligning data management work with stated business goals.
Kenny Sargent (Technical Lead, Enterprise Data Products, Compassion International) described his method for “Validation-Driven Development.” In this iterative agile method, a developer gets an early prototype in front of business users ASAP to get feedback and to make course corrections as early as possible. The focus is on data, to validate early on that the right data is being used correctly and that the data meets business requirements.
Besides the excellent user speakers described above, the summit also had break out sessions with speeches by representatives from vendor firms that sponsored the summit. Sponsoring firms included: IBM, SAS, BackOffice Associates, Collibra, Compact Solutions, DataMentors, Information Builders, and WhereScape.
To learn more about the event, visit the Web site for the
2013 TDWI Solution Summit on Master Data, Quality and Governance.
Posted by Philip Russom, Ph.D. on June 5, 2013