Anachronism and Data Quality

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

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

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

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

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

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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Getting eMail Addresses Right the First Time

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl4 Comments

emailChecking if an eMail address will bounce is essential for executing and measuring campaigns, news letter operations and other activities based on sending eMails as explained here on the site Don’t Bounce by BriteVerify.

A good principle within data quality prevention and Master Data Management (MDM) is the first time right approach. There is a 1-10-100 rule saying:

“One dollar spent on prevention will save 10 dollars on correction and 100 dollar on failure costs”.

(Replace dollars with your favorite currency: Euros, pounds, rubles, rupees, whatever.)

This also applies to capturing an eMail address of a (prospect) customer and other business partners. Many business processes today requires communication through eMails in order to save costs and speed up processes. If you register an invalid eMail address or allow self registration of an invalid eMail address you have got yourself some costly scrap and rework or maybe lost an opportunity.

As a natural consequence the instant Data Quality MDM Edition besides ensuring right names and correct postal addresses also checks for valid eMail addresses.

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What’s Different about MDM in Denmark?

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

little_mermaid_copenhagenAfter writing about What’s Different about MDM in France? It’s now time for a few words about what’s different about MDM (Master Data Management) in my native country Denmark.

International aspects of MDM isn’t strange

As a small market the domestic aspects is a minor thing for the large Danish companies as Maersk, Lego and Carlsberg. But even smaller companies grow out of the domestic market very early and that means that international aspects of MDM and related data quality are important in many implementations.

Even the flagship Danish MDM vendor Stibo Systems operated for many years with large foreign clients before recently getting their first domestic client.

Exploiting external reference data is imperative

Some industry sectors like finance and utility are still very domestic oriented. In party master data management good quality external reference data about domestic addresses, properties, companies and citizens are available at an affordable price and in some degree even free.

In my work at iDQ we have utilized this a lot as told in the story from the utility sector in the post instant Data Quality at Work. iDQ also help foreign companies as for example the largest bank in the Eurozone. As an example of another MDM domain than customer the service is also used for the HR domain by one of the the world’s largest employers.

The government isn’t a laggard

As reported in the post Making Data Quality Gangnam Style the government supports the use of reference data in private entities. But the data sources are indeed handled as a MDM program within the public sector ensuring that data silos in the public sector are eliminated with big wins for public administration as another result. Newest development is centralized support for handling master data about Danes abroad. Good to be involved.

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Multi-Facet MDM

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl5 Comments

In MDM (Master Data Management) there is the term Multi-Domain MDM being how we manage respectively parties, products, locations and other entity types and handling master data within a Multi-Channel environment encompassing offline, online and social channels is a huge challenge within MDM today. Yet another multi view of MDM is handling different facets of master data being:

  • Mulit-Facet MDMEntities
  • Relations
  • Events

Entities

Handling entities is the core of master data management. Ensuring that master data are fit for multiple purposes most often by ensuring real world alignment is the basic goal of master data management. Entity resolution is at key discipline in doing that. In the party master data domain doing Customer Data Integration (CDI) is the good old activity aiming at compiling all the customer data silos in the enterprise into a golden copy with golden records. Product Information Management (PIM) is another ancestor in the MDM evolution history predominately focusing at the entities.

Relations

A possible distinction between Master Entity Management and Master Relation Management is discussed in the post Another Facet of MDM: Master Relationship Management.

As we get better and better solutions for handling entities the innovation shifts to handling the relationships between entities. These relations exists for example in Multi-Channel environments by linking entities in the old systems of record with the same real world entities in the new systems of engagement as told in the post Social MDM and Systems of Engagement.

Events

Getting the master data right the first time is crucial.

In product master data management getting to that stage is often done by managing a flow of events where the product data are completed and approved by a team of knowledge workers.

In party master data management a way of ensuring first time right is examined in the post instant Single Customer View. But that is only the start. Party master data has a life cycle with important events as:

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Our Double Trouble

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

Royal Coat of Arms of DenmarkUsing the royal we is usually only for majestic people, but as a person with a being in two countries at the same time, I do sometimes feel that I am we.

So, this morning we once again found our way to London Heathrow Airport for one of our many trips between London and Copenhagen as we have lived in the United Kingdom the last couple of years but still have many business and private ties with The Kingdom of Denmark where we (is that was or were?) born, raised and worked and from where we still hold a passport.

Most public sector and private sector business processes and master data management implementations simply don’t cope with the fast evolving globalization. Reflecting on this, flying over Doggerland, we memorize situations where:

  • We as a prospect or customer in a global brand are stored as a duplicate record for each country as told in the post Hello Leading MDM Vendor.
  • You as an employee in a multi-national firm have a duplicate record for each country you have worked in.

People moving between countries are still treated as an exception not covered by adequate business rules and data capture procedures. Most things are sorted out eventually, but it always takes a whole lot of more trouble compared to if you just are born, raised and stays in the same country.

When we landed in Copenhagen this morning we (is that was or were?) able to use the new local smart travel card in order to travel on with public transit. But it wasn’t easy getting the card we remember. With a foreign address you can’t apply online. So we had to queue up at the Central Station, fill in a form and explain that you don’t have an official document with your address in the UK – and we avoided explaining the shocking fact that in the UK your electricity bill is your premier proof of almost anything related to your identity.

What about you? Do you have a being in several countries? Any war stories experienced related to your going back and forth?

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So You Think You Can Handle Big Data?

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl1 Comment

It has often been put forward that one might think that it’s strange that everyone think they can make sense out of big data while even the supposed best ones can’t get small data right.

Phone tappingA good reminder of that is reported by Gary Allemann in the post Data quality error embarrasses US. The post tells the story and learning from a recent incident, where a former South African anti-apartheid fighter was detained in the United States because he was still on a terrorist list +many years after the world finally has changed view about bad guys and good guys in that struggle.

So, while we have no doubt about that the United States security agencies are able to collect and store big data about almost every person (friends and enemies all together) we may have our doubts if these guys are able to make any sense of it if they don’t know who is naughty and who is nice at a given time.

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