Master Data Management is becoming increasingly popular and so are writing books about Master Data Management.
Last month Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen published their contribution to the book selection. The book is called “Master Data Management in Practice: Achieving True Customer MDM”.
As disclosed in the first part of the title, the book emphasizes on the practical aspects of implementing and maintaining Master Data Management and as disclosed in the second part of the title, the book focuses on customer MDM, which, until now, is the most frequent and proven domain in MDM.
In my opinion the book has succeeded very well in keeping a practical view on MDM. And I think that limiting the focus to customer MDM supports the understanding of the issues discussed in a good way, though, as the authors also recognizes in the final part, that multi-domain MDM is becoming a trend.
Mastering customer master data is a huge subject area. In my eyes this book addresses all the important topics with a good balance, both in the sense of embracing business and technology angels with equal weight and not presenting the issues in a too simple way or in a too complex way.
I like how the authors are addressing the ROI question by saying: “Attempts to try to calculate and project ROI will be swag at best and probably miss the central point that MDM is really an evolving business practice that is necessary to better manage your data, and not a specific project with a specific expectation and time-based outcome that can be calculated up front”.
In the final summary the authors say: “The journey through MDM is a constantly learning, churning and maturing experience. Hopefully, we have contributed with enough insight to make your job easier”. Yep, Dalton and Mark, you have done that.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 