Walls between data management silos are some of the worst causes of generating costs in data management. I have seen three main kinds of such walls:
The walls between enterprise units
If you have been working more than a day or two with data management within any kind of larger organization, you have probably noticed walls between data used in enterprise units. These walls may be due to using different applications in various geographies, lines of business, departments or other organizational units. It may also be different ways of storing data in the same application.
Countless Master Data Management (MDM) programmes are launched to tackle this conundrum, and many of them run into the wall without breaking it. But keep trying using more agile and lean thinking – and you will reduce costs by federating data silos.
The wall between business and IT
This is the silliest kind of wall I have ever seen as told in the post Tear Down This Wall! “Just break it” and reduce a lot of costs by simplifying data management.
The wall (and moat) around the enterprise
For some data domains, like product data, there are great cost reductions in working closely with your trading partners as told in the post The days of castle and moat are over, just as brick and mortar is slowly diminishing too.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 