Master Data, a lever to reach excellence?

Master data management has never been more strategic than it is in today’s digital era . It represents the company’s core: it ensures the transfer of master data, which is vital for the company’s activity, from and to all parts of the organization, and doing so, it guarantees the company’s sustainability and growth. Unfortunately, unlike the human body, proper regulation of this circulatory system is far from being innate.

Leading a master data governance project means defining the management rules for master data, like a civil code for master data. Governance aims to clarify how data is used, who owns it and who is responsible for its quality, according to the processes, solutions, norms or standards.

It involves looking at the semantics of what an item, a client, or a supplier within the database is, to define their life cycles, to consider everyone’s roles in the organization regarding the creation and maintenance of this data, and to rethink the applicative architecture where the data belongs.

It addresses several challenges such as:

• Reliability: ensuring accuracy and access at all firm’s levels.
• Consistency/quality: securing cre- ation/maintenance processes.
• Security: ensuring the security of data and exchanges.
• Agility: quickly adapting optimizing to operational needs.
• Productivity: optimize the workload needed to manage master data.

Master Data’s governance is a complex and transversal subject, which requires important cultural, organizational and technical transformations. Although operational committees are more and more aware of the importance of data quality, challenges regarding the core business are generally underestimated. In this context, the risk that these initiatives might not be valued or prioritized enough, is real.

Therefore, the alignment of the executive committee with the challenges and the expected results of the project is crucial before moving on to more operational phases of implementation of the project. A master data governance project does indeed create value, which ideally needs to be proven.

Today, ambitions about data management are high.

However, in reality, many companies are far from their objectives on this topic: 91% have not yet reached their “transformational” level of maturity regarding data management and analysis, although it has been a number 1 investment priority for ISDs over the last years (Gartner).

Several root causes have been identified by companies:

Even if the intrinsic value created for the firm by the project is sometimes difficult to estimate, reminding of its utility in the scope of a larger initiative, like a small brick in a large wall to build, is particularly convincing. This requires knowing how to take advantage of the transformation opportunities of the firm, to launch the project at the right time.

Therefore, one essential question needs to be asked: in which context is it relevant to raise the question of Master Data governance?

The executive committee’s adherence is necessary but is not enough. Even if it seems to be obvious, a successful master data project is 80% effort on the operational side, by frontline employees, and 20% by IT. The difficulty is to have frontline employees feel involved in the project, as such topics are sometimes far from their day to day activities. Involving some operational profiles who have competences in data and systems is often a profitable option for the firm.

In this environment, your approach to support changes at all levels is a key to success: