Tag Archives: Data Quality
Maximize Return On Data Through Data Governance
Are you delivering measurable business value (e.g., compliance/risk reduction; efficiencies/cost reduction; growth; strategic differentiation) from data management programs and investments? Hopefully many of you can say that yes, through traditional investment in data management best practices, skilled resources and enabling technologies you have provided business value. But for many, the business value delivered is often less than promised or anticipated – and it’s even more difficult to get the necessary funding and prioritization to scale the solution to deliver greater value. Why does this business value ceiling exist and why is it so difficult to break through?
Prevalent data management initiatives (i.e., data integration, data quality, data archiving, data masking, master data management, data warehousing, business intelligence, analytics) when managed as tactical, IT-driven efforts often deliver solid returns within the targeted environment or business area. But efforts to scale these solutions to support cross-enterprise objectives often crash and burn. To break through this business value ceiling – and maximize your return on data – senior business leaders must finally accept accountability and establish sustainable data governance practices within the organization. (more…)
Legal Entity Identifier – Preparing for the Inevitable
Most of the buzz around the water cooler for those responsible for enterprise reference data in financial services has been around the recent G20 meeting in Switzerland on the details of the proposed Legal Entity Identifier (LEI). The LEI is designed to help regulators manage and monitor systemic risk in the financial markets by creating a unique ID to recognize legal entities/counterparties shared by the global financial companies and government regulators. Agreement to adoption is expected to be decided at the G20 leaders’ summit coming up in June in Mexico as regulators decide the details as to the administration, implementation and enforcement of the standard. Will the new LEI solve the issues that led to the recent financial crisis? (more…)
Embrace the Oxymoron: Data Governance Requires Agile Bureaucracy
Last year, while still an analyst with Forrester Research, OCDQ “Blogger in Chief” Jim Harris and I coordinated dueling blogs taking polar-opposite stances on the debate over whether Data Governance initiatives should embrace an approach to optimize their agility or an approach to formalize the necessary bureaucracy. (You can read Jim’s blog here and my blog here.)
That was a fun exercise, but our clear conclusion was that aspects of both agility and bureaucracy are necessary to some extent for data governance to deliver real business value. (more…)
When It Comes to Data Quality Delivery, the Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff (Part 2 of 6)
In my first post I introduced the concepts of hard skills and soft skills in the context of data quality delivery, and I identified 5 soft skills that I think are highly critical to data quality delivery success, and which are typically underestimated; stakeholder management and communications, financial management, project management, commercial applications and operations. In this blog, I will discuss effective stakeholder management and communications as a key enabler of successful data quality delivery. (more…)
Data Quality and Big Data
In the world of big data, getting access to data and making sense of it is often times a more important consideration than managing sheer volume itself. Companies that are successful in unlocking true value from big data open themselves up to a world of insight for better understanding of things like customer preferences, satisfaction and regional purchasing differences. Doing this obviously is often harder than it seems due to the variety of information itself, leading to standardization and duplication issues. Ownership is often an issue as well, with departmental lines being the most common constraint to sharing important data across the enterprise. (more…)
Opportunities for Healthcare Organizations to Move Data Forward
In this video, Richard Cramer, chief healthcare strategist, Informatica, talks about the opportunities for healthcare organizations to move data forward. He touches on relationship analytics, master data management (MDM), data quality and Complex Event Processing (CEP). He specifically answers the following questions:
- What are some of the major opportunities for healthcare organizations to move data forward?
- What technology is most poised to deliver benefits to healthcare organizations today?
- How can Informatica help healthcare organizations in their quest to deliver proactive medicine?
Informatica Positioned in the Recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for MDM
Gartner recently published its annual Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Customer Data Solutions, which “positions MDM of customer data solution vendors (and their products) on the basis of their Completeness of Vision relative to the market and their Ability to Execute on that vision.” The growth of MDM market has been phenomenal – $1.6 billion in 2011, a growth of 21% from 2010, and projected to grow by the same rate to $1.9 billion in 2012. (more…)
Reading The Tea Leaves: Predictions For Data Quality In 2012
Following up from my previous post on 2011 reflections, it’s now time to take a look at the year ahead and consider what key trends will likely impact the world of data quality as we know it. As I mentioned in my previous post, we saw continued interest in data quality across all industries and I expect that trend to only continue to pick up steam in 2012. Here are three areas in particular that I foresee will rise to the surface: (more…)
Data Storage Is So Cheap Its Expensive
The cost for 1GB of magnetic disk storage 20 years ago was $1,000 – now it’s eight cents. 1GB is enough to store about 20 thousand letter-size scanned documents. To store the same number of paper documents would require two four-drawer filing cabinets which would cost about $400. The cost of electronic data storage is five thousand times less than paper storage.
Costs have dropped consistently 40% per year which accounts for the more than 12,000 times reduction in cost since 1992. The cost for RAID or mainframe disk storage is somewhat greater, but the historical trend for other storage devices has been similar and the forecast for the foreseeable future is that costs will continue to decrease at the same rate. Twenty years from now we will be able to buy one tera-byte of storage for a penny. (more…)
Reflecting On Data Quality In 2011
With just a few days remaining in what has been an eventful year, I thought I’d take some time to reflect on the world of data quality as I’ve observed it over the past twelve months. While the idea of data quality improvement in general didn’t change much, the way that companies are viewing and approaching it most certainly have. Here are three areas that seemed to come up quite frequently:
Data governance awareness grew
In thinking about all the customer interactions that I was involved in throughout the year, it’s hard to come up with one where the topic of data governance didn’t surface. Whereas before, the topic of data governance only seemed to come up for companies with more mature data management organizations, now it seems everyone is looking to build a governance framework in conjunction with their data quality efforts. Furthermore, while previously the conversation was largely driven by IT, now it’s both IT and business stakeholders that are looking for answers to how data governance can help them drive better business outcomes. In increasingly competitive market conditions, we can only expect this trend to continue. Whether it’s focused on increasing revenue, driving out cost or managing risk and compliance, data quality with data governance is where companies of all sizes are turning to create and sustain a differentiated edge. Trends like big data will only make this need more acute. (more…)