Category Archives: Data Quality
Enterprise Application Projects Are Much Riskier Than You Think
IT application managers are constantly going through a process of integrating, modernizing and consolidating enterprise applications to keep them efficient and providing the maximum business value to the corporation for their cost.
But, it is important to remember that there is significant risk in these projects. An article in the Harvard Business Review states that 17% of enterprise application projects go seriously wrong; going over budget by 200% and over schedule by 70%. The HRB article refers to these projects as “black swans.”
How can you reduce this risk of project failure? Typically, 30% to 40% of an enterprise application project is data migration. A recent study by Bloor Research shows that while success rates for data migration projects are improving, 38% of them still miss their schedule and budget targets.
How can you improve the odds of success in data migration projects?
- Use data profiling tools to understand your data before you move it.
- Use data quality tools to correct data quality problems. There is absolutely no point in moving bad data around the organization – but it happens.
- Use a proven external methodology. In plain English, work with people who have “done it before”
- Develop your own internal competence. Nobody knows your data, and more importantly, the business context of your data than your own staff. Develop the skills and engage your business subject matter experts.
Informatica has industry-leading tools, a proven methodology, and a service delivery team with hundreds of successful data migration implementations.
To find out more about successful data migration:
- Informatica World: Visit us at the Hands On Lab – Data Migration.
- Informatica World: Informatica Presentation on Application Data Migration.
Application Data Migrations with Informatica Velocity Migration Methodology
Friday June 5, 2013 9:00 to 10:00
- Informatica World: Data Migration Factory Presentation by Accenture
Accelerating the Power of Data Migration
Tuesday June 4, 2013 2:00 to 3:00
- Bloor White Paper: Lower Your Risk with Application Data Migration: Next Steps With Informatica
- Informatica White Paper: De-Risk Your Application Go Lives
Modernizing or Rationalizing Your Application Portfolio? Don’t Neglect the Data Migration
When executing application modernization or application rationalization your focus is on supporting the business strategy by implementing systems that run critical business processes. And that is exactly where the focus should be.
The problem comes when there is a lack of focus on delivering trustworthy data for those business systems and processes. If you are consolidating enterprise applications or upgrading to new enterprise applications, the data needs to be migrated from System A to System B. This is virtually never a simple “cut & paste.” In fact, data migration projects can be fairly risky. Bloor Research has found in their latest study that 38% of these projects fail. Even worse, the Harvard Business Review reports that 17% of enterprise application projects go over budget by 200% and over schedule by 70%. There are many examples of this. The State of California has terminated their contract with their ERP vendor after spending $254 million. The U.S. Marine Corps has spent $1.1 billion on another ERP system, 10 times its original estimated cost.
So, how do you deliver the business value that your users demand? Here are four best practices to help you to deliver applications on-time and on-budget that meet the user’s needs for timely, authoritative data.
- Have an internal competence in data migration. This is a best practice identified by Bloor Research in their study on data migration. You can’t simply turn this project over to a third party. Only your staff truly knows your internal data. Another thing to consider is that your staff will also have to operate the new applications after go-live (see #4).
- Have a separate data migration team and budget. Bloor Research also recommends a separate budget and team. This is to ensure that there is a strong focus on data migration and quality and that it doesn’t become just a project detail in the larger application installation. Bloor found a very high likelihood of project failure if there is not a separate budget.
- Make sure that your business users are deeply involved. The Bloor survey found that by far the #1 success factor identified by their respondents was “Business engagement.” Unless the business side is deeply involved in requirements definition and providing business context there is a significant risk of misunderstandings that will result in a system that does not meet the needs of its users.
- Consider the new system go-live as the beginning, not the end. We have seen many organizations that view data migration as a “one-and-done” project where everybody packs up and goes home at the end of the project. An enterprise application is a living, breathing, system that needs continuing care and feeding. Once the application goes live, you will need to provide services such as: ongoing data quality management, synchronization with other operational systems, and synchronization with a master data management hub if you have one.
For more information:
Live Webinar with Philip Howard of Bloor Research. May 20, 2013. Successful Application Go-Lives: Best Practices for Application Data Migration
Application Data Migration Presentations at Informatica World 2013. We will have a Hands-On Lab and data migration presentations from Accenture and National Oilwell Varco.
Bloor White Paper: Best Practices for Data Migration
Informatica Solution Site: Data Migration Solution
Zoom in to zoom out: The big picture in information management
We’ve been spending a lot of time here at Informatica preparing for Informatica World. That means taking a big step back to take the broader view of all the change happening in the world of information management and data integration today. New data sources and new data technologies are emerging almost daily, and the pace is only accelerating. Our mission is to help our customers and our market not only cope with all this change, but to harness it for competitive advantage.
But even as we’re putting together the latest take on the big picture, we’re also zooming in on the technology “secret sauce” which makes it possible to manage all this change. Informatica has the “secret sauce”– it’s what makes our architecture unique, and it’s what allows us to deliver the most value to our customers.
I’m not going to tell you what the “secret sauce” is now– you have to come to Informatica World to find out. Our executives including Sohaib Abbasi, Ivan Chong and James Markarian will be laying out the big picture, as well as revealing the “secret sauce.” And I’ll be diving in to more details in my Informatica Platform overview breakout session.
I hope to see you in Vegas next month. (by the way, the special hotel rate ends this Friday May 3rd, so register today!)
Ochsner Health System Realizes the Potential of Data
Last week, we hosted a webinar Realizing the Potential of Your Data with Ochsner Health System. Jonathan Stevenson, Director of Analytics, joined me for a dialogue on what they’ve learned in their early steps toward becoming an Accountable Care Organization.
We had a an interactive audience asking questions. A few of which, with their answers, are included below: (more…)
When it comes to Data Quality Delivery, the Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff (Part 6 of 6)
In my previous blog I explored the importance of a firm understanding of commercial packaged applications on data quality success. In this final post, I will examine the benefits of having operational experience as a key enabler of effective data quality delivery. (more…)
When It Comes to Data Quality Delivery, the Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff (Part 5 of 6)
In my last blog post I discussed why an understanding of corporate financial concepts is so important to data quality success. In this blog, I will examine knowledge of commercial enterprise applications as a key enabler of effective data quality delivery.
Packaged applications for ERP, CRM, MRP, HCM, etc. were first introduced decades ago to provide tightly integrated business management functions, standardized processes and streamlined transaction processing. While one can argue whether or not these applications have lived up to all of the hyperbole, the reality is that they have been successful and are here to stay. As these backbone systems continued to evolve and mature, lessons learned from thousands of implementations were incorporated into the model solutions as best practices. These best practices spawned industry standard processes and specialized variants were born (e.g. vertical systems solutions). With the widespread adoption of these solutions, the days of custom building an application to meet the business’s needs have largely disappeared (although exceptions do persist to support specialized needs). (more…)
Turn the Data Warehouse into a Glass House
Jim Harris, OCDQ
The data warehouse’s goal is timely delivery of trusted data to support decision-enabling insights. However, it’s difficult to get insights out of an environment that’s hard to see inside of. This is why, as much as is possible given the necessities of data privacy, a data warehouse should be turned into a glass house, allowing us to see data quality and business intelligence challenges as they truly are.
Trusted data is not perfect data. Trusted data is transparent data, honest about its imperfections, and realistic about the practical trade-offs between delivery and quality. You can’t fix what you can’t see, but even more important, concealing or ignoring known data quality issues is only going to decrease business users’ trust of the data warehouse. Perfect data is impossible, but the more control enforced wherever data originates, and the more monitoring performed wherever data flows, the better overall data quality will be in the warehouse. (more…)
The Broken Telephone of the Data Warehouse
Jim Harris, OCDQ
In many ways, a data warehouse resembles the children’s game broken telephone, where a message is distributed across a group by being whispered into the ear of one player after another, until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Since errors typically accumulate in the retellings, the final version of the message often differs significantly from its source. Some players appear to deliberately alter what’s being said, guaranteeing a garbled message by the end of the game.
As data journeys from operational sources through the staging area, the data warehouse, the data marts, and finally into dashboards and reports, a lot could be lost in translation. As it is processed, data is often deliberately altered to make it accommodate the structure of its next target. Every time data moves from point to point, there is a possibility for semantic inconsistencies to be introduced. (more…)
Announcing Informatica Cloud Spring 2013
On Wednesday we announced our latest cloud integration release – Informatica Cloud Spring 2013. It’s a major step forward in terms of breadth and depth for our software as a service (SaaS) solution. Why, you ask?
- Didn’t all of our cloud integration customers get upgraded to the Winter release in November?
- Didn’t we just broaden into cloud-based master data management (MDM)?
- Don’t we have 3-4 releases per year?
Well, yes…but…there are a few aspects to today’s announcement that I think are particularly noteworthy. Here’s a summary.
When Delivery is Job One, Quality is Job None
Jim Harris, OCDQ
The reality in data warehousing is that the primary focus is on delivery. The data warehouse team is tasked with extracting, transforming, integrating, and loading data into the warehouse within increasingly tight timeframes. Twenty years ago, monthly data warehouse loads were common. Ten years ago, weekly loads became the norm. Five years ago, daily loads were called for. Nowadays, near-real-time analytics demands the data warehouse be loaded more frequently than once a day. (more…)
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