If you want to understand the key issues around an MDM project then I would encourage you to read an excellent case study that has just been published in CIO magazine. It discusses a major project to try and sort out the master data at Nationwide Insurance (one of the largest US insurers). The case study illustrates the kind of organisational and business decisions that need to be made in order to succeed with this type of project. It is an unusually detailed write up of how a company with fourteen general ledgers, seventeen finance data warehouses alone and 300,000 spreadsheets took a root and branch approach to radically improving the situation of their master data, and by and large seem to have succeeded.
It is also daunting reading in one way, as it shows the level of business commitment that is required to sustain a project of this scale. Anyone thinking that a purchase of an MDM tool and a small project team with a million dollars or so of budget will do the job needs to read this case study. I have seen a few serious MDM projects in my time but this was certainly one of the more ambitious ones.
Finally, a very happy Christmas to you, my readers. Have a lovely holiday.
1 comment so far
Andy –
Thanks for mentioning my article in CIO magazine. You touched on something that I hoped came through in the article: that any type of MDM/CDI change is going to be big and intense. But when you get into these huge companies, the task becomes even greater. I was in awe of the challenge that Nationwide took on, and impressed with the way they pulled it off. It was not easy, to say the least.
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