The document discusses the key steps involved in preparing for a successful Master Data Management (MDM) implementation. It outlines understanding what MDM is and gaining business buy-in, defining business objectives, addressing critical planning questions, and focusing on important preparation steps such as identifying data sources and assigning data stewards. Proper preparation is emphasized as essential to ensuring an MDM initiative's success.

1. Preparing for a
Master Data Management
Implementation

2. Introduction
Effective preparation is key to ensuring the success of master data management (MDM) initiatives. First,
your organization will want to understand what is involved with your MDM initiative, including determining
what MDM is and is not. It’s critical that your business leaders are on board with your initiative, so that
as you outline your business objectives for MDM, they will reflect the business’s priorities. You can then
address critical questions that help you properly plan for your implementation. Once your organization
answers these questions, you can start focusing on specific steps that will help ensure implementation
success.
2 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

3. When you and your company choose to take on a master data management (MDM) project, you are making
a commitment to develop, cultivate and maintain a perpetually attuned and active approach toward the
most effective and sound data administration possible for your organization. MDM has become a necessity,
particularly in regulated industries. One of the key reasons behind this is that MDM is essential to proper
data management and data governance.
While an MDM project requires a large commitment from everyone involved, the value is undeniable to
companies that make adherence to data governance a priority. MDM entails more than a series of broad-
stroke efforts to make sure your files are easily accessible, and protected with firewalls. Those features
are critical, but in MDM, you manage the finer points in data, including uniformity, accountability, accuracy,
semantic consistency, and general stewardship. Attention to such minutia offers you easier access to your
files long into the future, since you will not need to try to wade through inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies.
These unchecked human errors can cost large chunks of time and resources for everyone involved in the
search for a single document or asset, so it is worth it to put a system in place to help conform the data as a
part of the company’s shared master data assets.
As you begin to plan your MDM strategy, you will look for the most uniform and consistent set of central
data identifiers and unique attributes used by internal staff, client prospects, customers, suppliers, vendors,
websites, accountants, and anyone else who might need access to the data.
Understand what MDM is and is not
MDM is quickly becoming
a must-have, particularly in
regulated industries.
What MDM is
3 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

4. What MDM is not
Before implementing an MDM project, IT managers must understand a few things to avoid during the
process. Sometimes, in an effort to organize and streamline operations, it is easy to jump in too quickly and
approach data management from the wrong angle. Preconceived ideas and assumptions can prove costly
and counterproductive for your IT team and your business. Here are two misconceptions to consider from
the outset to save time, delays, and resources:
• MDM is not another database
Brian Berry at BlumShapiro offered a few insights on MDM, noting that many in the
tech industry — especially those with little or no MDM exposure or experience —
often fall for the illusion that MDM acts like any other database.1
Your MDM will have
its own set of rules and best practices to help you design a clean and simple data
infrastructure, which you and your IT team can run smoothly to make it easier for
everyone involved with the data to access files in an instant.
• CRM and MDM are not one and the same
Berry points out that while many customer-relationship management (CRM) software
packages tout their own MDM capabilities, you still need to create a separate
repository for MDM where the data governance group can manage the data. This is
because you do not want the data governance group to have to manage data in a
process-oriented system like CRM.
4 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

5. Andy Hayler, in Computer Weekly, offers a crucial piece of advice as you and your IT team move forward
in your MDM efforts, which is that your business — especially including each of your company’s leaders —
needs to work with you in taking ownership of your company’s data.2
Data is everyone’s concern; it’s not
just IT’s problem to fix. Passing the baton back to IT defeats the purpose of creating a universal system for
master data. It is important that business leaders see data as valuable as any bankable asset in order for
MDM to work effectively.
Make sure your business
leaders are on board
Data is everyone’s concern. It’s not just IT’s problem to fix.
5 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

6. With your business leaders and IT team ready to work in tandem, it is important to sit down —
probably during several sessions over the course of many months — and establish the objectives
you collectively have for your MDM initiative. Prepare yourselves and management for a process
that will, along the way and in the end, yield measurable positive results.
In order to achieve these results, you first have to define your business objectives. Here’s a list of
one organization’s objectives as an example3
:
1. All of the organization speaks a common and consistent language regarding data
and information terminology.
2. A reasonable level of standardization across the MDM processes exists.
3. MDM processes are handled consistently across the organization.
4. The MDM lifecycle is effectively controlled, while allowing for speed and agility.
5. A group is in place to make key, critical business decisions regarding the data.
This group is recognized, respected and utilized throughout the organization.
6. At all times, the data is at a balanced level of data quality (cost to achieve vs.
benefit realized).
7. The master data enables effective decision making.
8. Data is a core capability of the organization.
With all this in mind, you can start working toward your goal of incorporating MDM into your
business, making it an integral part of your company’s success.
Define your business objectives
6 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

7. • What do you need to do to achieve your ultimate goals?
• What sequence should you follow to achieve those goals?
• What resources will you need throughout the process?
• What benefits will you receive and when? Should you look for incremental
and periodic results as benchmarks or wait until completion?
• What will this program cost?
Start with a core team to
establish criteria and ask the
right questions.
While everyone will ultimately become involved with stewardship of your MDM program, you will
start with a core team to establish criteria and implement your plan. Once you have your team in
place, start the process by asking these types of questions:
Address critical planning questions
7 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

8. 1. Identify all sources of master data
Identifying all sources of your master data is an essential exercise that will jumpstart your MDM program.
This step is crucial and may take some time, but making sure you cover all your data locations will help
prevent you from needing to backtrack in the future. Once you start delving into your source data, you will
probably discover multiple databases that you and your IT had no idea existed. You might also find many
data redundancies right away, in addition to the more nuanced data duplications.
Once you and your team carefully analyze and answer these questions — as specifically as you can for
your organization — you can start focusing on specific steps, such as the following:
Using the first step as a springboard, identify everyone who produces or uses your business’s master
data. This step will help you manage your master data efficiently and effectively.
2. Pinpoint the producers and users of your organization’s master data
Focus on important
preparation steps
8 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

9. Once you have determined data sources, you need a team to help you take that data to the next phase.
These stewards will take ownership of the data and work with business to ensure that business goals are
met. Try to appoint stewards who were the owners of or are familiar with the ownership of each particular
master data source.
4. Assign data stewards
This team, or council, will have a textbook knowledge and a global perspective on the MDM program.
You will entrust this group to work as a direct support for the steering and success of the program,
reporting to you and your immediate team to quickly note deviations, omissions, and other issues, so you
can work together to come up with strategies to make quick and effective corrections. You award these
council members the authority to make vital decisions about master data, such as how long you will keep
it. These critical team members also will determine changes to master data, as well as how you will audit
that data. Select this team carefully since you and your team will need to make hundreds of critical data
decisions during the process of MDM transition. Along the way, you will need a well-defined and trusted
decision-making council to help come to agreements regarding data. The lack of a well-oiled governing
body can slow down, obstruct, or even completely halt the MDM process, so choose this team wisely.
5. Create a data management governance council
Collect and analyze all the metadata within your master data. Your metadata represents salient
information and key attributes about specific pieces of master data. In this step, you will deconstruct this
data and figure out each piece’s attributes and meaning. Details to look for include the attribute’s name,
type of data, allowed values, constraints and limitations, default values, dependencies, and with whom
the data originated, as well as who is now responsible for it. Determining the owner of the data is the
most important step in this phase, but it is also the most challenging.
3. Dig into your metadata
MDM models are available either as standalone offerings or within MDM platforms. Using one of these
options, determine how to tune your MDM model to reflect how you want your master data to look and how
you want everyone to interact with it. Look at various attributes of your data, including size, data type, and
values allowed. In this step, you will also map between the current data and sources versus your master
data model. Again, by working with a dedicated and savvy team committed to streamlining your data
processes, you will come to the right conclusions.
6. Tune your MDM model
9 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

10. With an understanding of the scope and requirements of your master data at hand, you can establish
the appropriate infrastructure to support your MDM requirements. This should be done with a thorough
understanding of your existing IT environment in order to effectively coordinate with other systems that your
MDM platform will eventually interact with.
7. Create your infrastructure
It makes sense to create guidelines to ensure compliance going forward. You will continue to monitor old
source data – and maintain quality for any incoming data – for the life of your master data program. You will
monitor and calibrate production and consumption of new data as needed as part of your ongoing efforts.
8. Monitor new data production and consumption
Much of your maintenance for the future will involve keeping key team players in place once you have
achieved your goals for implementation of an MDM program. Your data stewards — usually people working
on the business side since they understand the nature of the data as it pertains to the business itself — will
work with you and your IT team to ensure governance and quality control of master data.
9. Establish a plan for maintenance
Key team players should stay involved,
even after an MDM implementation.
10 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

11. Reaping the benefits of
effective planning
We’ve reviewed the important aspects as you plan for implementing MDM. These include understanding
MDM in your organization, ensuring business buy-in, establishing MDM business objectives, and
addressing critical questions and specific implementation steps. Undertaking the effort to understand and
address the important planning aspects for MDM will help enable your organization to minimize risk for
your MDM implementation and ensure a successful outcome for both IT and business.
Do you need help getting your
MDM implementation started?
Innovative Systems has developed world-class expertise to
help with rapid, accurate, risk-free MDM implementations.
Call us to learn more about how we can help your
organization succeed.
1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-critical-success-factors-initiating-master-data-management-berry?articleId=82754675122
2. http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Tips-for-master-data-management-best-practice
3. http://www.dataversity.net/8-goals-for-your-master-data-management-program/
11 PREPARING FOR A MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

12. ​Innovative Systems has been providing software and consulting services to major companies in
more than 40 countries for over 45 years. We deliver both on-premises and cloud-based (SaaS)
multi-domain enterprise data management solutions that can be deployed for operational or decision
support requirements.
World Headquarters
790 Holiday Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15220-8127 US
Phone: 800.622.6390
International Call: +1.412.937.9300
E-mail: info@innovativesystems.com
About Innovative Systems, Inc.
www.innovativesystems.com
TORONTO | MEXICO CITY | FRANKFURT | BOGOTÁ | CAYMAN ISLANDS | AMSTERDAM | SINGAPORE
EMEA / APAC Headquarters
Level 21b, Tower 42
25 Old Broad Street
London, EC2N 1HQ UK
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7422 6310
E-mail: info@innovativesystems.com
Rapid, accurate, risk-free MDM