My last blog post was called Is Managing Master Data a Differentiating Capability? The post is an introduction to a conference session being a case story about managing master data at Philips.
During my years working with data quality and master data management it has always struck me how different organizations are managing the party master data domain while in fact the issues are almost the same everywhere.
First of all party master data are describing real world entities being the same to everyone. Everyone is gathering data about the same individuals and the same companies being on the same addresses and having the same digital identities. The real world also comes in hierarchies as households, company families and contacts belonging to companies which are the same to everyone. We may call that the external hierarchy.
Based on that everyone has some kind of demand for intended duplicates as a given individual or company may have several accounts for specific purposes and roles. We may call that the internal hierarchy.
A party master data solution will optimally reflect the internal hierarchy while most of the business processes around are supported by CRM-systems, ERP-systems and special solutions for each industry.
Fulfilling reflecting the external hierarchy will be the same to everyone and there is no need for anyone to reinvent the wheel here. There are already plenty of data models, data services and data sources out there.
Right now I’m working on a service called instant Data Quality that is capable of embracing and mashing up external reference data sources for addresses, properties, companies and individuals from all over the world.
The iDQ™ service already fits in at several places as told in the post instant Data Quality and Business Value. I bet it fits your party master data too.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 