Month: March 2013

Master Data Management in the Utility Sector

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl4 Comments

Making vertical MDM (Master Data Management) solutions, being MDM solutions prepared for a given industry, seems to become a trend in the MDM realm.

Traditionally many MDM solutions actually are strong in a given industry or a few related industries.

This is also true for the MDM solution I’m working with right now, as this solution has gained traction in the utility sector.

So, what’s special (and not entirely special) about the utility sector?

Here are three of my observations:

Exploiting big external reference data

As examined in the post instant Data Quality at Work the utility sector may gain much in using all the available external reference data available in the party master data domain, including:

  • Consumer/citizen directories
  • Business directories
  • Address directories
  • Property directories

However, if data quality shouldn’t be a joke, this means using the best national data sources available as many of the world-wide data sources is this domain are far from providing the precision, accuracy and timeliness needed in the utility sector.

Location precision

Managing locations is a big thing in the utility sector. The post called Where is the Spot explains how identifying locations isn’t as simple as we may use to think in daily life.

This is indeed also true in the utility sector where the issue also includes managing many different locations for the same customer fulfilling different purposes at the same time.

The products

puzzleThe electricity supply part of the utility sector share a lot of issues with the telco sector when it comes to fixed installations and the products and services are in fact the same in some cases which also as a consequence means that  some organizations belongs to both sectors.

This is also a danger with vertical MDM solutions as there may be several best-of-breed options for a given organization, which eventually will result in choosing more than one platform and thereby introducing the silos which MDM in first place was supposed to eliminate.

Counting on LinkedIn

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

Let’s say LinkedIn opened a bank. Would you put money into the LinkedIn bank?

I don’t think I would if they used the same technology for accounting as they use for counting members in the LinkedIn groups.

The other day I made a happy tweet telling that the Social MDM LinkedIn group just got 400 members. And now today LinkedIn told me we are only 385 members. First thought: Jesus, 15 members left in a few days. Boring subject. Missing the hype before it even got inflated.

But when I went to the statistics page we were now 400 again:

Count1

Going back to the member list and refreshing it several times showed these results:

count2

And:

Count3

And:

Count4

Well, I guess we are around 400 members. And oh, there’s room for more. Join here.

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You probably won’t find the truth (and salsa) inside your firewall

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl1 Comment

In a Data Roundtable blog post published today and called Big Data in Your Kitchen Phil Simon says:

“CXOs who believe that “data” is simply the content in their own internal databases are increasing being seen as anachronistic. More progressive leaders understand that data is everywhere, including–and especially–external to the enterprise.”

Bringing in external data was also touched recently by Kim Loughead of Informatica in the post Bring The Outside In: Why Integrating External Data Sources Should Be Your Next Data integration Project.

Herein Kim emphasizes that: “Innovation is driven by data and that data largely resides outside your firewall”.

SalsaMy humble work in bringing in the outside revolves around a service called instant Data Quality (iDQ™). This service is about exploiting the increasing choice if external directories holding valuable information about the individuals, companies, addresses and properties we have so much trouble with reflecting in our party master data hubs.

What about you? Are you anachronistic or do you bring in the outside? Or as it will sound in Phil’s Big Data Kitchen: Will you miss salsa tonight?

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Who Killed Big Data?

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl7 Comments
No Bulls
Please, no big data bullsh…

I guess everyone is sick and tired of seeing the term “big data” attached to just about everything larger than 1 kilobyte.

But who is responsible? Who do we hold accountable for overusing the term big data? Who killed big data?

Was it first and foremost the vendors who made the kill? A recent blog post called “Big Data is Dead. What’s Next?” by John De Goes suggest that the vendors are to be blamed for stabbing big data from behind.

Could it be the analysts? I have, as mentioned in the post The Big MDM Trend, seen how Gartner (the analyst firm) have put big data forward in the shouting gallery in order to explain something already explained with other terms.

Big data has often been personalized by the data scientist. So maybe it was a Californian girl called Jill Dyché who caused an extinction of the data scientist and thereby big data. She wrote the blog post called Why I Wouldn’t Have Sex with a Data Scientist.

What do you think? Who killed big data?

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Connecting CRM and MDM with Social Network Profiles

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

As told on DataQualityPro recently in an interview post about the Benefits of Social MDM, doing social MDM (Master Data Management) may still be outside the radar of most MDM implementations. But there are plenty of things happening with connecting CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and social engagement.

While a lot of the talk is about the biggest social networks as FaceBook and LinkedIn, there are also things going around with more local social networks like the German alternative to LinkedIn called Xing.

Xing02

Last week I followed a webinar by Dirk Steuernagel of MRM24. It was about connecting your SalesForce.com contact data with Xing.

As said in the MRM24 blog post called Social CRM – Integration von Business Netzwerken in Salesforce.com:

“Our business contacts are usually found in various internal and external systems and on non-synchronized platforms. It requires a lot of effort and nerves to maintain all of our business contacts at the different locations and keep the relevant information up to date.”

(Translated to English by Google and me).

Xing01

We see a lot of connectors between CRM systems and social networks.

In due time we will also see a lot of connectors between MDM and social networks, which is a natural consequence of the spread of social CRM. This trend was also strongly emphasized on the Gartner (the analyst firm) tweet chat today:

GartnerMDM chat and social MDM

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Data Quality Vendors Beware of SEO Agencies

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl7 Comments

As reported in the post Fighting Identity Fraud with Identity Fraud and experienced with the post 255 Reasons for Data Quality Diversity I have seen several sloppy attempts of link building from SEO agencies working for data quality tool vendors.

The other day it happened again, this time on LinkedIn.

There was a comment in the Master Data Management Interest group:

DataLadder SEO

The comment is now deleted by the author and I do understand why.

I guess a SEO guy was working for Simon at DataLadder and Nathan from somewhere else at the same time and given access to their LinkedIn accounts. However he/she posted a comment to be meant being from Simon logged in as Nathan (who is not working with MDM and data quality).

So, data quality tool and service vendors: You can’t fight identity fraud with identity fraud and you can’t advocate for a single view of customer with a messy view of you as a vendor. Be authentic.

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