What does management of Master Data involve and what is the strategic approach to maintaining high quality Master Data?

Key guidelines for keeping a consistent master data repository in an organization include:

• Definition: Consistent definitions used across the organization, along with consistent structures and attributes.
• Structure and Relationships: Clear relationship charts and hierarchy relationships between the entities and rules for assignment. Flexibility in the definition of entities to insulate downstream applications for changes.
• Consolidation: Multiple master data sources need to be ‘virtually’ consolidated into a centralized repository in order to cleanse the data and come up with the standard ‘Gold’ master data set.
• Cleansing: Multiple master data sets require cleansing. Auto cleansing based on rules is required. Manual cleansing is needed to attain 100% cleansed data.
• Stewardship: Clear owner or steward group defined, both in terms of users and/or functions.
• Custodianship: Clear system owner(s) by entity. If multiple systems create and maintain the same entity, need to ensure mutually exclusive data sets.
• Change management process: Clear change management process (creation, update and deletions) to ensure continued quality of data moving forward.
• Visibility and Deployment: Visibility into the data, definition, relationships to ensure consistent understanding across the organization. Deployment of the data based on systems that need. Single interface for visibility & deployment from ‘virtual’ central repository is needed.

The right approach to the problem starts with building a foundational layer, the Standard Data Foundation, which encompasses all the activities related to the identification, definition, structuring, quality, and deployment of common data entities in the organization. It enables disparate data to be refined and integrated, providing the organization with the ability to merge different data sources.

To understand how OneData applies this approach to an MDM solution, click here