Next Generation Master Data Management: An Overview in 35 Tweets
Blog by Philip Russom
Research Director for Data Management, TDWI
To raise an awareness of what the Next Generation of Master Data Management (MDM) is all about, I recently issued a series of 35 tweets via Twitter, over a two-week period. The tweets also helped promote a TDWI Webinar on Next Generation MDM. Most of these tweets triggered responses to me or retweets. So I seem to have reached the business intelligence (BI), data warehouse (DW), and data management (DM) audience I was looking for – or at least touched a nerve!
To help you better understand Next Generation MDM and why you should care about it, I’d like to share these tweets with you. I think you’ll find them interesting because they provide an overview of Next Generation MDM in a form that’s compact, yet amazingly comprehensive.
Every tweet I wrote was a short sound bite or stat bite drawn from TDWI’s recent report on Next Generation MDM, which I researched and wrote. Many of the tweets focus on a statistic cited in the report, while other tweets are definitions stated in the report.
I left in the arcane acronyms, abbreviations, and incomplete sentences typical of tweets, because I think that all of you already know them or can figure them out. Even so, I deleted a few tiny URLs, hashtags, and repetitive phrases. I issued the tweets in groups, on related topics; so I’ve added some headings to this blog to show that organization. Otherwise, these are raw tweets.
Defining the Generations of MDM
1. #MDM is inherently a multigenerational discipline w/many life cycle stages. Learn its generations in #TDWI Webinar
2. User maturation, new biz reqs, & vendor advances drive #MDM programs into next generation. Learn more in #TDWI Webinar
3. Most #MDM generations incrementally add more data domains, dep’ts, data mgt tools, operational apps.
4. More dramatic #MDM generations consolidate redundant solutions, redesign architecture, replace platform.
Why Care About NG MDM?
5. Why care about NexGen #MDM? Because biz needs consistent data for sharing, BI, compliance, 360views.
6. Why care about NexGen #MDM? Most orgs have 1st-gen, homegrown solutions needing update or replacement.
The State of NG MDM
7. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: #MDM adoption is good. 61% of surveyed orgs have deployed solution. Another 29% plan to soon.
8. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: #MDM integration is not so good. 44% of solutions deployed are silos per dept, app, domain.
9. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Top, primary reasons for #MDM: 360-degree views (21%) & sharing data across enterprise (19%).
10. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Top, secondary reasons for #MDM: Data-based decisions (15%) & customer intelligence (13%).
11. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Other reasons for #MDM: operational excellence, reduce cost, audits, compliance, reduce risk.
12. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Top, primary #MDM challenges are lack of: exec sponsor, data gov, cross-function collab, biz driver.
13. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Other challenges to #MDM: growing reference data, coord w/other data mgt teams, poor data quality.
MDM’s Business Entities and Data Domains
14. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: “Customer” is biz entity most often defined via #MDM (77%). But I bet you knew that already!
15. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Other #MDM entities (in survey order) are product, partner, location, employee, financial.
16. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Surveyed organizations have an average of 5 definitions for customer and 5 for product. #MDM
17. #TDWI TAKE: Multi-data-domain support is a key metric for #MDM maturity. Single-data-domain is a myopic silo.
18. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: 37% practice multi-data-domain #MDM today, proving it can succeed in a wide range of orgs.
19. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Multi-data-domain maturity is good. Only 24% rely mostly on single-data-domain #MDM.
20. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: A third of survey respondents (35%) have a mix of single- and multi-domain #MDM solutions.
Best Practices of Next Generation MDM
21. #TDWI TAKE: Unidirectional #MDM improves reference data but won’t share. Not a hub unless ref data flows in/out
22. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: #MDM solutions today r totally (26%) or partially (19%) homegrown. Learn more in Webinar http://bit.ly/NG-MDM #GartnerMDM
23. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Users would prefer #MDM functions from suite of data mgt tools (32%) or dedicated #MDM app/tool (47%)
24. #TDWI Survey: 46% claim to be using biz process mgt (BPM) now w/#MDM solutions. 32% said integrating MDM w/BPM was challenging.
25. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Half of surveyed organizations (46%) have no plans to replace #MDM platform.
26. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Other half (50%) is planning a replacement to achieve generational change. Learn more in Webinar http://bit.ly/NG-MDM
27. Why rip/replace #MDM? For more/better tools, functions, arch, gov, domains, enterprise scope.
28. Need #MDM for #Analytics? Depends on #Analytics type. OLAP, complex SQL: Oh, yes. Data/text mining, NoSQL, NLP: No way.
Quantifying the Generational Change of MDM Features
29. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Expect hi growth (27% to 36%) in #MDM options for real-time, collab, ref data sync, tool use.
30. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Good growth (5% to 22%) coming for #MDM workflow, analytics, federation, repos, event proc.
31. #TDWI SURVEY SEZ: Some #MDM options will be flat due to saturation (gov, quality) or outdated (batch, homegrown).
Top 10 Priorities for Next Generation MDM
32. Top 10 Priorities for NG #MDM (Pt.1) 1-Multi-data-domain. 2-Multi-dept/app. 3-Bidirectional. 4-Real-time. #TDWI
33. Top 10 Priorities for NG #MDM (Pt.2) 5-Consolidate multi MDM solutions. 6-Coord w/other disciplines. #TDWI
34. Top 10 Priorities for NG #MDM (Pt.3) 7-Richer modeling. 8-Beyond enterprise data. 9-Workflow/process mgt. #TDWI
35. Top 10 Priorities for NG #MDM (Pt.4) 10-Retire early gen homegrown & build NexGen on vendor tool/app. #TDWI
FOR FURTHER STUDY:
For a more detailed discussion of Next Generation MDM – in a traditional publication! – see the TDWI Best Practices Report, titled “Next Generation Master Data Management,” which is available in a PDF file via a free download.
You can also register for and replay my TDWI Webinar, where I present the findings of the Next Generation MDM report.
Philip Russom is the research director for data management at TDWI. You can reach him at prussom@tdwi.org or follow him as @prussom on Twitter.
Posted by Philip Russom, Ph.D. on April 13, 2012