Data Syndicators, Brokers and Providers, Oh My!
I’m writing this blog in the late afternoon in an alcove of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco’s famous atrium. A couple of hours ago, the MDM Summit finished up, and now men are rolling big carts stacked with crates of beer across the tile floor. Colored lights make the anodized aluminum bars of Charles O. Perry’s “Eclipse” sculpture look like a giant musty rose. A tense-looking chef appears; buttoned up in his professional white smock, he walks with brisk steps toward the window to check his cell phone. Reception is bad in this hotel, which doesn’t look like it’s changed much since it opened rather spectacularly in around 1970. Outside, the summer sun radiates light into the blue sky, blue bay and everything that’s moving: walkers, skateboarders, trolley cars and buses. In the distance, the first thin, grey vapor of fog stretches in a line across Angel Island. There’s more to come.
Before I succumb to the charms of this place and order an Anchor Steam, I’d like to offer some thoughts about master data management (MDM) and data governance based on what I heard at the conference. It will probably take a couple of blog installments to wrap it up. Here is the first.
Data is flying everywhere these days, particularly as more businesses turn to the Web for external sources that might give them an edge in customer intelligence. Social networks and communities could be rich sources of information about how customers relate to each other and self-define their communities. However, organizations are fooling themselves if they do not exercise MDM processes to do some of the same modeling, integration and quality efforts for external sources that they would to integrate views of data from internal sources. MDM processes are those that help organizations improve the quality and consistency of their data across multiple sources, increase their understanding of data relationships and manage how it is accessed and distributed to users.
William McKnight, a partner with US-Analytics and Louie Torres, who is now director of Business Solutions after having been director of Information Systems at Forbes, offered a useful presentation on “Incorporating Syndicated Data into Your MDM Environment.” The speakers noted that IT often exercises little control over the use of external sources; business units go out on their own to engage data syndicators, brokers and providers, which can create new data silos in the organization. However, they do this for business reasons – and as Torres pointed out, they own the P&L. “We are very interested in ‘psychographics’ that tell us what people like to do,” he said. To be closer to business units’ decisions about data sources and more helpful to their use of them, Torres, as director of Business Solutions, has moved out of IT.
With data syndicators such as InfoUSA offering to send as many as 6,000 data points on customers, the speakers noted that it is important to look at what you really need – and whether you need to pay to have it updated. “How many birthday or gender updates do we really need?” said Torres. Forbes is looking for granular data about who has a yacht, who likes to play golf and other rather moneyed customer activities. So, the company will focus most closely on data points that deliver on those matters. The speakers suggested that companies should determine what they want, and not pay for what they don’t need. As well, they should not include data points that could offer suspect information and invite into the organization information management headaches that aren’t necessary.
In part, headaches come because data brokers and syndicators are buying and selling data behind the scenes like mad. You often don’t know what they have pulled together to create a sellable data package. This can create data quality and consistency problems, making it important for organizations to use MDM processes to ascertain and ensure the quality of customer views. It also means that organizations should develop policies for external sources as part of their data governance. I will cover this aspect in a later blog.
What about the MDM industry itself? I caught the part of conference chair Aaron Zornes’ talk where he was discussing the systems integrators (SIs) and the importance of their role in MDM. He said that his organization, The MDM Institute, will have a report out on this subject shortly. One important point he made: There’s been a lot of “moving and shaking” in the SI industry, particularly regarding information management practices. Thus, Zornes offered a buyer beware; organizations should make sure that the expertise they are being promised by the SI is still what the firm is capable of delivering.
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