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MDM is short for Master Data Management.
We like to think MDM is a solution for consolidating data into a single “master” data management scheme. Companies recognizing the need for MDM have the same requirements. They realize their data is segregated and not occurring in one single place. When it comes to updating, they have to update multiple places in the company. When a Jane Doe is created in one application and the same person, J. Doe is created in another application, the company sees two individuals rather than one. It becomes a bigger problem when varied information is entered for Jane Doe and J. Doe. In time, it becomes impossible to distinguish the two records. In situations like this, a company will simply treat these two records as two individuals.
You can easily see how reporting can be flawed. Companies that recognize the need for MDM usually see the problem when they have to generate reports for management. A lot of companies will export their data into Excel spreadsheets then have people “massage” the data until they arrive at better estimates. The people massaging the data are not altering the data in any way, but they are in a sense, mastering the data. It is during the massaging of data that causes them to report discrepancies in the data. The proper step after noting the discrepancies is to alert those who are in charge of the applications that hold the data to change it in their application. Most companies employ data stewards to be the master of the domain and their primary task is to ensure that the data is accurate.
It has been our experience to see that data stewards do not always update their domain when discrepancies are known. By not updating the data, the problem continues with inaccurate results and the need to massage the data continues month to month. What we have is intellectual property in data massagers’ heads which is subject to memory loss when these individuals quit or move to other business functions.
It’s not always the fault of the data stewards to update the applications. They have to make a corporate decision on whether to update company data or to ignore the request. One of the reasons that may cause them to not update the data is because of the reports that were generated previously. Due to record keeping policy, the need to reproduce any report at any time is critical. If the data steward changes the data, future reports may differ from reports that were already distributed and accepted.
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