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Centralized Confusion

Chris Gemignani

Today’s post is brought to you by Andrew White of Gartner from an article in
their 2007 CRM conference brochure:

What’s the single biggest benefit of practicing MDM?

There are multiple drivers that help enterprises decide to
embark on an MDM [1] program. Implementing a CDI-focused [2] MDM program
will help implementations of CRM [3] achieve a higher return by
enabling better cross-marketing and selling.

Implementing PIM [4] within MDM will help supply chains fulfill
orders more timely [sic] and introduce new products more quickly. Embedding
MDM in an SOA [5] environment contributes to business (process) agility
through support of more rapidly developed composite applications; and
others help cut costs by supporting better procurement practices.

Way to cut though to the heart of the issue, guys. Let’s see if we
can decode what they’re saying:

Knowing more about your customers will help you find
more products that existing customers want. It will help develop those
products too. And let’s not forget your web apps. They’ll be easier to
develop and easier for other companies to integrate with if you have
your data well organized.

It’s nice to be able to decode this, but semantically, there’s
nothing there. This response amounts to “Trust us, it’s great!”

[1] Master Data Management is another salvo in the eternal battle between centralization and decentralization in organizations. The wheel turns; today it’s MDM, in 5 years it will be called Centralized Metadata Integration.

[2] Customer Data Integration means centralizing how you track customer-related information

[3] Customer Relationship Management systems track interactions with
your customers

[4] Product Information Management is CDI for products–see how easy
this is getting?

[5] Service Oriented Architecture is a way of building computer
services as little pieces rather than big integrated applications

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  • darrell

    First, build a sand castle in the line of business, until a bully knocks it down and builds a second bigger sand castle centrally. Its more cost efficient, right?

    Next, realize that the info you want/need doesn’t fit in the central HQ sand castle, and what does fit is either incomplete, or incompatible with the desired info standards (say, one or two LOB’s skewed the sand castle design).

    Then discover that you can neither adjust the information structure cost effectively, nor make any changes to the information (not even to correct wrong information). So you build a third sand castle in the local LOB, and ignore the central one.

    Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Its guaranteed lifelong employment for Techies & Marketing types. What a great racket; I want in.

    Sometimes it seems that BI databases have a development cycle of two years and a half life of 12 months.

  • http://juiceanalytics.com Chris Gemignani

    Darrell, a lovely summarization of the reality out there.

    “Sometimes it seems that BI databases have a development cycle of two years and a half life of 12 months.”

    I’ve participated in this cycle myself. I think the only winners are Gartner and the consulting firms who get to name the trends as they come ’round.

  • Ed Lavallee

    So, what’s the answer? In a large established company with many localized (redundant) solutions looking to gain efficiencies from its global operations (once independant regional entities), how can one bring together all this data for consolidation, inspection and intelligence? Can’t MDM as a discipline help make sense of this quagmire?

    Respectfully, Ed.

  • Dan

    There are multiple drivers that help individuals decide to acquire a CAR transit system. Implementing a destination-focused transit program will help JOB-enabled citizens achieve higher levels of employer satisfaction by utilizing currently existing GAS-driven technologies.

    Implementing CAR by use of existing FWY network capabilities will help citizens complete transit operations more timely and extend the number of destination opportunities available to traditional BUS-based transit systems.

  • http://andpointsbeyond.com Jay Jakosky

    So much of this talk goes in circles like a dictionary that defines a word but uses the word in the definition. To be fair, I think this sort of talk is designed for and helps executives communicating UP the chain to tech-challenged boardrooms. When it comes time to work DOWN the chain and actually build one, all the white papers behind these acronyms are useless.