A vision for integrating and sharing data is the first step towards understanding the current data situation and gaining control of data. The challenge, as mentioned earlier, is for the approach to be able to identify and integrate, without impacting the business and the existing infrastructure.

Implementing a standard data foundation is an iterative process revolving around discovery, refinement and gradual deployment. Initial implementation phases do not require organizations to change their existing business process or systems; what they do require is business user commitment to define, structure and code data, with technology as an aid to refine/map/integrate existing systems to the standard platform.

Subsequent phases require conformance of the standard platform for any new initiatives and a gradual deployment to the existing sources. This will eventually result in minimizing, or in certain cases, eliminating the mapping and integration layer entirely.