From the Editors: Master Data Management journeys never-ending, but still worth it

Master data management is like the quest for the Holy Grail. Just because the attainment of a pure state of perfectly integrated and flawless data is mythic does not invalidate the journey.

Lloyds Banking Group has sustained a longstanding effort to put master data management at the heart of its business strategy, and gain a single customer view, through a history of mergers and acquisitions, including that of HBOS in 2009. Crucial has been a shift from an account-centric to a customer-centric approach to business common to financial services firms. The discipline of MDM is, for Lloyds Banking Group, crucial to that.

In the public sector, MDM has demonstrated value at the London Borough of Brent Council. Its master data management (MDM) hub has not only facilitated revenue collection and combated Council Tax and other forms of fraud, it has also helped respond to changing central government demands. Brent Chief Information Officer Tony Ellis is confident that the MDM programme he has driven since moving to the council in 2005 will continue to accrue benefits.

So-called ‘big data’ could be seen as the problem to which MDM is a solution. It is a striking term, but there is the danger that it places the accent on sheer volume rather than on the value to be struck from the expanding diversity of an organisation’s data. Teradata’s chief technology officer Stephen Brobst explains the value of the term ‘big data’ in terms of a shift from transactions to interactions that capture customer experience or behaviour.

Buzzwords like MDM and ‘big data’ are necessarily imperfect attempts to name management processes and technological phenomena that lie at the heart of how, and against which contexts, organisations succeed. But they can drive you nuts. My colleague Mark Brunelli offers a light-hearted take on data management buzzwords. Enjoy!

And if you’d like to contact me about any aspect of data management or business analytics, please do so.

Meanwhile, please find below links to other recent articles on SearchDataManagementUK that you might like to explore.

Best wishes,

Brian McKenna

Each month, SearchDataManagement.co.UK editors choose recent articles and other content to highlight here for our readers. We welcome your feedback on these items and our site in general – you can contact us directly or at [email protected].