Month: November 2013

Trust in External Data is Like Trust in Analysts

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl1 Comment

The analyst industry is like any other industry. Analysts compete. Mostly analysts do it by presenting what is supposed to be more trustworthy reports than the other ones do including their special visualization method be that a quadrant, landscape, bulls eye or whatever approach . And sometimes they compete by bashing the other ones.

ukraine_fight
MDM market analysts meetup

This week I had a blog post called A Little Bit of Truth vs A Big Load of Trust. The post cites a blog post from Andrew White of Gartner called From MDM to Big Data – From truth to trust. This post again cites an article on SearchDataManagement called Enterprise master data management and big data: A well-matched pair?

Andrew White’s post praises the views of fellow Gartner analyst Ted Friedman in the SearchDataManagement article and bashes the views of the other contributors being Evan Levy, Andy Hayler (Information Difference), Aaron Zornes of the MDM Institute and Kelly O’Neal by saying:

“… presumably since the thinking out there in the cited analyst community has not gotten very far yet.”

Indeed, you have to consider multiple opinions out there when it comes to Master Data Management (MDM), big data and other external data. The same way there are, when it comes to the data, multiple versions of the truth out there and you have, with Andrew White’s words, to: “..manage and govern trust in someone else’s data”.

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About Big Data and Doing It

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The below saying has become a popular share around in social media:

“Big data is like teenage sex. Everybody talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.”

Indeed, there is quite a lot of hype around big data as for example told in The Big MDM Trend.

big data and teenage sexThe teenage sex joke isn’t new at all. It has been used about a lot of new trends. I remember when the e-Business hype started, the joke was used here as well as you still can find some evidence about if googling the saying and getting this and that.

Today e-Business has matured and maybe a few brick and mortar bookstores have stopped laughing about the e-Business and teenage-sex joke now.

Also, maybe the joke says more about parents’ knowledge about teenage-sex.

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A Little Bit of Truth vs A Big Load of Trust

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

The soul of Master Data Management (MDM) is often explained as the search for a single version of the truth. It has always puzzled me that that search in many cases has been about finding the truth as the best data within different data silos inside a given organization.

business partnersBig data, including how MDM and big data can be a good match, has been a well covered subject lately. As discussed in the post Adding 180 Degrees to MDM this has shed the light on how external data may help having better master data by looking at data from outside in.

At Gartner, the analyst firm, they have phrased that movement as a shift from truth to trust for example as told in the post by Andrew White called From MDM to Big Data – From truth to trust.

Don’t get me (and master data) wrong. The truth isn’t out there in a single silver bullet shot. You have to mash up your internal master data with some of the most trustworthy external big reference data. This include commercial directory offerings, open data possibilities, public sector data (made available for private entities) and social networks.

Indeed there are potholes in that path.  Timeliness of directories, completeness of open data, consistency and availability and price tags on public sector data and validity of social network data are common challenges.

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The MDM Market Wordle

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl4 Comments

Analyst firms have a lot of fun in making different surveys and rankings of vendors in different markets using their own special visualizing method. For the Master Data Management (MDM) market we have this year had the:

Encouraged by a recent comment on the post What’s New in The Data Quality Magic Quadrant? I have now made my take on the market utilizing the wordle as my special visual approach.

Lazy as I am I haven’t made my own survey but simply taken the brand names from the rankings mentioned above and filled in the name either 1, 2 or 3 times from each report depending on how well the brand was positioned.

So the size of the letters tells something about market positioning according to analyst reports. The size of the words also tells something about the length of the brand name. The placement is according to the wordle principle of course totally random.

And of course I now expect a load of tweets from vendor marketing departments saying that their company is positioned very randomly in the MDM Market Wordle 🙂

MDM Wordle

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Third-Party Data and MDM

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl1 Comment

A recent blog post called Top 14 Master Data Management Misconceptions by William McKnight has as the last misconception this one:

“14. Third-party data is inappropriate for MDM

Third-party data is largely about extending the profile of important subject areas, which are mastered in MDM.  Taking third-party data into organizations has actually kicked off many MDM programs.”

business partnersIndeed, using third-party data, which also could be called big external reference data, is in my eyes a very good solution for a lot of use cases. Some of the most popular exploitations today are:

  • Using a business directory as big reference data for B2B party master data in customer data integration (CDI) and supplier master data management.
  • Using address directories as big reference data for location master data management also related to party master data management for B2C customer data.
  • Using product data directories such as the Global data Synchronization Network (GDSN®) services, the UNSPSC® directory and heaps of industry specific product directories.

The next wave of exploiting external data, which is just kicking off as Social MDM, is digging into social media for sharing data, including:

  • Using professional social networks as LinkedIn in B2B environments where you often find the most timely reference data not at least about contact data related to your business partners’ accounts.
  • Using consumer oriented social networks as Facebook for getting to know your B2C customers better.
  • Using social collaboration as a way to achieve better product master data as told in the post Social PIM.

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Anachronism and Data Quality

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The term anachronism is used for something misplaced in time. An example is classical paintings where a biblical event is shown with people in clothes from the time when the painting was done.

anachronismIn data quality lingo such a flaw will be categorized as lack of timeliness.

The most frequent example of lack of timeliness, or should we say example of anachronism, in data management today is having an old postal address attached to a party master data entity. A remedy for avoiding this kind of anachronism is explained in the post The Relocation Event.

In a recent blog post called 3-2-1 Start Measuring Data Quality by Janani Dumbleton of Experian QAS the timeliness dimension in data quality is examined along with five other important dimensions of data quality. As said herein an impact of anachronism could be:

“Not being aware of a change in address could result in confidential information being delivered to the wrong recipient. “

Hope you got it.

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Social Events and Master Data Management

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Recently I changed one of my job titles on LinkedIn resulting in a number of likes, congrats and messages. And thanks for that.

Probably I have a record in a number of CRM systems out there where I am registered as a contact for an account with an attached job title. As a guy working at several places at the same time I am a bit complicated, I have to admit, so I guess many of these records aren’t up to date about where I work carrying what title and having what means of contact.

Complicated or not, I have no doubt about that many CRM implementations will benefit from digging into social networks in order to be up to date and complete as told in the post Social MDM and Complex Sales.

New job (title)As discussed in the post Multi-Facet MDM we may divide master data management into handling these facets:

  • Entities
  • Relations
  • Events

Within party master data management events may be captured during interacting with your (prospective) customers and other business partners, as an update from a third party reference data provider or in an increasing way by monitoring social networks which are often the first to know certain things, not at least when it’s about contacts in Business-to-business (B2B) activities.

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Everyday Year 2000 Problems

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14 years ago this was busy times for computer professionals, including yours truly, because of the upcoming year 2000 apocalypse. The handling of the problem indeed had elements of hysteria, but all in all it was a joint effort by heaps of IT people in meeting a non-postponable deadline around fixing date fields that were too short.

everyday y2k problemsData entry and data storage fields that are too short, have an inadequate format or are missing are frequent data quality issues. Some everyday issues are:

Too short name fields

Names can be very long. But even a moderate lengthy name as Henrik Liliendahl Sørensen can be a problem here and there. Not at least typing your name on Twitter, where the 20 characters name field corresponds very well to the 140 character message length, forces many of us to shorten our name. I found a remedy here from a fellow Sørensen on a work around in the post Getting around the real name length limit in Twitter. Not sure if I’m prepared to take the risk.

Too short and restricted postal code fields

When working with IT solutions in Denmark you see a lot of postal code fields defined as 4 digits. Works fine with Danish addresses but is a real show stopper when you deal with neighboring Swedish and German 5 digit postal codes and not at least postal codes with letters from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and most other postal codes from around the world.

Missing placeholder for social identities

The rise of social media has been incredible during the last years. However IT systems are lacking behind in support for this. Most systems haven’t a place where you can fill in a social handle. Recently James Taylor wrote the blog post Getting a handle on social MDM. Herein James describes a work around in a IBM MDM solution. Indeed we need ways to link the old systems of records with the new systems of engagement.

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Data Quality vs Identity Checking

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl1 Comment

Yesterday we had a call from British Gas (or probably a call centre hired by British Gas) explaining the great savings possible if switching from the current provider – which by the way is: British Gas. This is a classic data quality issue in direct marketing operations being accurately separating your current customers and entities belonging to new market.

As I have learned that your premier identity proof in the United Kingdom is your utility bill, this incident may be seen as somewhat disturbing – or by further thinking, maybe a business opportunity 🙂

identity resolutionAt iDQ we develop a solution that may be positioned in the space between data quality prevention and identity check by addressing the identity resolution aspect during data capture.

The nearly two year old post The New Year in Identity Resolution explains some different kinds of identity resolution being:

  • Hard core identity check
  • Light weight real world alignment
  • Digital identity resolution

Since then I have seen a slowly but steady convergence of these activities.

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MDM for Product Data Quadrant: No challengers. A half visionary.

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Product Data Solutions is out. You may have a free look at it for example going through Tibco’s press release on the matter here or directly thanks to IBM here.

MDM Brands
This is not the quadrant. Just some names.

My thoughts are kind of the same as told in the post MDM for Customer Data Quadrant: No challengers. No visionaries. Let’s just have a (Multi-Domain) MDM quadrant.

The quadrant for customer MDM solutions had no challengers and no visionaries. The quadrant for product MDM solutions has a half visionary, as Informatica is positioned as a niche player with its recent Heiler acquisition and just on the right side of the border between niche players and visionaries with what must be the Siperian acquisition from a couple of years ago. This solution has multi-domain capabilities as an important strength.

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