« Building Business Intelligence Business-Case | Main | New Data Standards?- What about existing applications »
July 7, 2008
Big things start with a simple step- Customer Data Quality
Today after I did 17th hole, my friend (so close a friend that I have refused to have him as a customer), who is managing USD one billion dollar enterprise, shared his data related problems with me. He has multitude of issues related to data quality, data integration, single view of customer etc...Before he could go further, I suggested to him one simple step he can take, which can cover 50% of his journey to resolve his issues (and opportunities). I am sharing the same tip with you. This may sound simple, but if done well, can lay a strong foundation of your journey for data and information management.
"Can you spare 20% of the time of a person, who is part of your management team and is among your top performers take the single point 'sail or sink responsibility' for integrity and management of all customer data in your organization?'. Forget about all other aspects of data quality, data integration, data warehouse etc...Put 2-3 full-time resources under him. Make this responsibility as minimum 20% weightage of his goals, for next one year. This role will be called - Business owner of Customer Data-Group"
If the answer is yes, just go ahead and give him the responsibility. Hire a good consulting company, which can work with him to create a road-map, and milestones to work on the customer data. Come back to me after this person is on the job for few months.
Here are some of the questions, which my friend asked me, and quick answers (in italics) I gave:
'Will he not ask about his goals and measures of success'- If he is your top performer and senior manager, he will himself prepare the draft road-map and get it firmed-up. You just have to spell out the expectations at a high level.
'How will we figure out the funding and organization structure?' - A senior executive is paid for managing ambiguities and unknowns. He will come with the proposal for funding and organization, once he has figured it out. Give him the support from experts. Most of the aspects of Data and information management can be understood by applying Ist principles.
What about the other areas like financial data, production data etc..?- Start with the customer data, and as you fix it, you will fundamentally improve many processes, which will positively impact other data groups.
DISCLAIMER- My friend had major issues with customer data. If you have more issues with say production data, you can apply the same principle for production (instead of customer). The simplicity in production is that you generally have a logical owner (say head of order fulfillment). Its the data-groups like Customer, Vendor, Sales Leads, Locations, Products etc...,which have a bigger challenge.
You can find some more detail on data-group in Data-Group Master. It may sound little technical, but is easy to understand. It is part of a paid product, but not to worry, as the abstract itself will give you some idea of what I am talking about.
Posted by Rajan Gupta at July 7, 2008 8:15 PM
