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What do blogging and ransom demands have
in common?
I've been writing both of them this month.
I've
joined the blogosphere with my new blog, the Data
Doghouse. It's where I get to
spout off my "unleashed observations on the
business and technology of performance management,
business intelligence, and data warehousing."
My
hope is that it's also where you will feel free
to join me with your comments and suggestions.
Go on over and take a look.
As
for ransom demands, see below.
Your Data Manager's Ransom Note
by
Rick
Sherman, Athena IT Solutions
Your
data manager has a list of demands. OK, he isn’t
actually holding anyone hostage, but still, take
a minute to really listen to what he wants. He’s
become a little frustrated and just wants you
to know how he feels.
He’s
been nice to his business users, managers and
peers. He’s provided thorough materials
explaining the value of the company's data management
efforts to users so they could present it to upper
management. He’s kept up with the latest
best practices, technological innovations and
industry trends. He’s even championed data
stewardship and ownership; explained the connection
between financial transparency and metadata (which
made everyone think he was crazy!); and encouraged
the IT staff to document its applications.
But
sometimes, he feels that he is Don Quixote chasing
the windmills.
Here’s
what he wants:
1. Business users that give up Excel and
stop building data shadow systems. We
try to provide quality data that is consistent,
clean and useful. But then the business groups
extract the data and create hundreds of spreadsheets.
In meetings, everyone argues over who has the
right numbers. So much for the single version
of the truth!
2.
Business users and IT groups who are committed
to data stewardship, custodianship and ownership.
It would be great to tie in financial transparency
and regulatory compliance with data management.
Trying to tackle these initiatives without managing
data is kind of nuts, don't you think?
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“Best-of-breed" sounds terrific,
but what both business users and IT really
need is the equivalent of Microsoft Office
Suite in BI.” |
3.
A single, comprehensive, cost-effective tool to
provide business intelligence. "Best-of-breed"
sounds terrific, but what both business users
and IT really need is the equivalent of Microsoft
Office Suite in BI. Nobody, except power users
and techies, wants to learn multiple tools. And
we can't afford an expensive software package.
We have other work to do, such as getting the
right data in place for the users to analyze.
4.
A comprehensive and cost-effective approach for
data integration. ETL, EAI, EII, CDI,
MDM, CPM, blah-blah-blah. We need an enterprise
approach to integrate structured and unstructured
data, along with its metadata, to provide the
data needed by the business. We don't need yet
another data-integration tool silo. We don't need
our ERP, CRM, BI and DW vendors providing their
own proprietary data integration tools.
5.
A year without pressure to upgrade our software
either because of vendors' mergers or vendors'
grand schemes to abolish world hunger with their
latest major release. How many new and
improved products can we handle? We'd like to
work on data and data management rather than spending
our time, resources and budgets chasing the latest
gadget.
6.
A year when industry experts and vendors do not
dream up yet another round of buzzwords and trends
that label data-integration activities as something
new and different. I'm tired of vendors
and tools that offer the same old stuff in new
packages. Thanks to them, we're off creating the
next round of data silos. The industry has to
stop creating new buzzwords that encourage data
stovepipes across the enterprise. MDM, CDI and
the others are all just data integration …
one version of the truth for a particular stovepipe.
7.
Industry analysts who focus on what's really important.
Why can't analysts create a quadrant
that factors in what's really valuable to the
business, rather than just comparing who has the
shiniest and biggest tool? It should include how
practical the tools are and how costly they are
to implement, including licensing, implementation,
maintenance and migration costs.
8.
An integration center of excellence for our enterprise.
We need a group of people with the expertise to
get involved in every data integration project.
This strategy would prevent re-inventing the wheel,
doing yet another evaluation for the latest technology
and getting sold on the latest buzzwords. This
group can be a virtual coalition of people. But
please do not make it a product-focused group,
because then people will think they are biased
and not open to what is needed.
9.
A simple way to track and manage metadata across
the enterprise. We need to provide data
audit and data lineage from data creation to information
consumption. It would be great to do that without
spawning a systems-integration project that grows
bigger than creating the DW itself.
10.
A "single version of the truth."
We need to provide the business with the right
data, at the right time and to the right people.
Is this asking too much?
If
you’re a data manager, are you getting what
you want? What else would you add to
this list? I’d love to hear it: rsherman@athena-solutions.com.
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