Two Missteps in Master Data Management and How to Avoid Them

Managing your data should be easy. You should be able to access any sets of data you need to run in your business whenever you need it. It should be as simple as setting up an automated report, or just a few clicks and the information should be at your fingertips. It doesn’t always work out that way — especially if you’re trying to do it in-house. There are many common missteps when implementing master data management. This post will help you avoid those missteps.

You Have No Plan

The only thing worse than having a plan is having a bad plan. A bad plan is worse than having no plan, because at least you have no plan you’ll soon realize you need one. If you have a bad plan hopefully you realize it sooner rather than later.

What’s included in a solid plan? Well, we’re glad you asked. A thorough, well-thought out MDM plan needs to have a strategy. That strategy needs to consider all major (and minor) points of your business. Here are some questions to ask when developing that plan:

1. Where is the data?

2. How reliable is the data?

3. Who needs the data?

4. How secure is the data?

5. How will the necessary people access the data?

Sure there is much more that goes into the actual implementation of a bulletproof MDM strategy, but by being able to answer those questions above you are well on your way to understanding how your MDM strategy will need to work.

Nobody Owns the Data Cleanup Process

Oftentimes a MDM strategy brings together applications and sometimes data from spreadsheets. For the sake of example, let’s say your marketing team uses a robust CRM like HubSpot, your accounting team is using QuickBooks and your consultants are using their own spreadsheets that they upload to Google Drive each month.

When it’s time to consider an MDM strategy the data is a mess. You know it’s a mess because you search for a customer and there are five different records for that same customer, containing slight variations of the same data. Now it’s time to own it. It’s not the IT department’s job to make sure that data is all cleaned up before implementing the MDM strategy.

A common misstep here happens when everyone assumes another person is going to clean up the data. That never happens. The data ends up being messy and unreliable, thus defeating the whole purpose of MDM.

Don’t Go At It Alone

At Aspirant we are experts in evaluating, installing, configuring, and implementing high-performance data warehouse architectures. We understand the importance of having complete and accurate information available at your fingertips. If this is a pain point for you or your company, contact us below. We’d love to explore how we can help.