Skip to main content

Data Management – Are we all speaking same language ?


I compared the “Data Management” with a story of Elephant and Seven Blind Men in my last blog post http://manageyourdata.blogspot.in/2012/09/data-management-elephant-seven-blind-men.html. I promised to start writing my views about the issues that I heard so far from my customers, consultants and product companies that I worked with.

The first issue is confusion with the whole terminology. This seems very basic thing but if all stakeholders in this value chain are not talking same language, same terms with same meaning the initiative is doomed to fail.

5 years back in 2007, when I was working on evaluating a “data mapper” product for a company in California – I realized how complex a terminolgy issue can be. I was at their office for 2 days, going through product screens, meeting high value real architects. The product was really good, nice UI, good functionality – but less appeal in the market. I was talking to marketing head, and he said – Prashant ask me questions about the product. Ask me when you seek a functionality in a product, what would you ask for. And I did that. You know what – the company worked hard based on such feedback from industry users and within a year launch new version which talks in terms of users and then bought over by a giant. Value unlocked. That was one off example.

What were my questions to them ?

1.    How does ETL works in this ?
2.    What is the data profiling mechanism?
3.    Does this tool normalize my data ?
4.    Does this tool classify my data ?
5.    Does this deduplicate ?
6.    Can this gives  me exceptions to rules data sets ?
7.    Can I override tool with my own rules ?
8.    Does this toll enrich my data ?
9.    Can I specify attributes for enrichment ?
10. Can I have multilevel enrichment ?
11. Can I map different datasets to one common datasets?
12. Can this tool produces validation reports with data ?

Few of these seems typical techno-functional and not so business based questions. But when you Go to market – who is your customer? For data – mostly its IT people – who are technical. The business will surely have a different set of questions but they will map to these invariably. How ?

What a Supply Chain or Procurement business person will ask typically for ?
1.    How do I cleanse my multilevel redundant BOM (Bill of Material ) Data ?
2.    How do I generate required spare parts listing with good data ?
3.    Can I have cleansed, good quality suppliers list ?
4.    Where do I aggregate my suppliers by parents – to leverage spending patterns ?
5.    How do I search my customer list and aggregate that ?
6.    Can I have a classified product list – to get necessary dashboard, inventory or spend amounts ?

Have a close look and you will see most of it maps to core questions above.

So in next post – I will try to provide glossary of terminology that invariably and interchangeably used while discussing Data Management .

As usual – Please keep sending your feedback & questions.

Prashant Mendki
Pmendki at gmail dot com
Twitter - @pmendki

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bristlecone Webinar on Supplier Risk Management

Purchasing Magazine, Bristlecone and SAP getting together to bring you very good discussion on supplier risk management. Webinar will be held on June 24, 2 to 3 PM eastern Time, USA. Contributors are - Paul Teague from Purchasing magazine , Jason Buch from spendmatters , Naresh Hingorani from Bristlecone - Supply chain leader company and Padmini Ranganathan from SAP. As we always talk about spend visibility, data issues, strategic sourcing - these distinguised speakers will bring out more strategic views to the table on how all this can be achieved to analyze your business risks better, upfront. You can register for event by accessing this link and register See you there.
Post a Comment
Read more

Master Data Management – Product or Process ?

I have 2 SAP systems and I want to fix my material master, Services Master. I want all that data to be clean, standardized, classified, enriched and load it back to my SAP in next 6 months. What do you suggest ? Chris - one of my key client was explaining during a “solution understanding” call. My sales manager Tom, enthusiastically started talking about new version of the MDM platform by ERP company, tools, technologies, product landscape, licenses etc. After 30 minutes of sales pitch, I could see confusion on Chris’s face clearly. He said - but I don’t want to add any new product in my infrastructure for all this. Can you just implement MDM for me without I adding any new software ?   Both are using MDM implementation as a keyword, but in a completely different context. Chris wants to implement MDM as a process while Tom was trying to sell MDM as a new software. Whats the difference ? Lot I will say. MDM as a product – when you sell a   software license to a...
4 comments
Read more

Data Management - Elephant & Seven Blind Men

I am sure most of you read a story of Elephant and Seven Blind Men. For starters - this is how the story goes - "A number of blind men came to an elephant. Somebody told them that it was an elephant. The blind men asked, ‘What is the elephant like?’ and they began to touch its body. One of them said: 'It is like a pillar.' This blind man had only touched its leg. Another man said, ‘The elephant is like a husking basket.’ This person had only touched its ears. Similarly, he who touched its trunk or its belly talked of it differently." As Wikipedia mentions - This story has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies. At various times it has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behavior of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives. The moral of the story is - While one's subjective experience...
Post a Comment
Read more