Enterprise Data Management Blog Roundup

As if writing for one blog (Data Doghouse) is not enough, now I'm also writing for Informatica's new Enterprise Data Management blog.

My co-authors are Ivan Chong, Informatica's VP of Product Marketing, James Markarian, Informatica's CTO and Don Tirsell, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Informatica.  I've included below a short roundup of my posts on that blog.

If you're attending the inaugural meeting for the TDWI Boston chapter on April 26 be sure to say hello. As chapter VP I'm looking forward to seeing local industry friends and meeting new ones. We're expecting a very large turnout.

I'll also be at the TDWI World Conference in Boston to teach a class Thursday May 17.

If you feel like multitasking while you're working or driving, listen to my newest podcast with SearchDataManagement's Hannah Smalltree.

Finally, I'd like to take a minute to thank my DW/BI students at Northeastern. This was my first time teaching a graduate-level college course and it was a great experience. Good luck on the final exam tonight!

Rick Sherman, Athena IT Solutions

Achieving Information Nirvana

Financial transparency. Auditability. Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Thanks to governmental, industry and stockholder pressures, the work of financial managers has never been scrutinized so closely.

Do you feel the pressure? Of course you do. What’s the first step you should take? Investing in one of your enterprise’s most valuable assets: its data.

read the complete post, Achieving Information Nirvana

The CFO's ultimate challenge

Consistent, correct data. That doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? But actually, one of the most daunting challenges facing CFOs and their staffs today is how to ensure that the financial information they supply to stakeholders, both externally and internally, is consistent and correct. The checklist for compliance seems to grow whenever you turn around. Sarbanes-Oxley, US Patriots Act, HIPAA. MiFID, Basel II, PCI data security standards, etc. – were these even part of our vocabulary several years ago?

read the complete post, The CFO’s ultimate challenge

The Enterprise Approach to Data - Better than a Sleeping Pill

Do you know where your financial data was last night? Sure, you know the operational and financial systems that it was in, but who else played with it before it got into your financial reports? What undocumented IT processes (horrors!) extracted data, manipulated it and then input into another system? And how many spreadsheets did the data get imported into, changed and then passed along to another spreadsheet?

It would be humorous if this was just happening to your competitors' data. But it’s happening to yours. And it's keeping your CFO up at night.

read the complete post, The Enterprise Approach to Data – Better than a Sleeping Pill

Enterprise Data Management - It's not just for finance any more

When we discuss Enterprise Data Management (EDM) we’re almost always talking about how it applies to finance. It’s no wonder. Finance is where EDM has made the biggest inroads and the biggest impact so far. With governmental regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and intense pressure from stakeholders, such as investors, the CFO has to seriously look at effectively managing data. EDM has enabled organizations large and small to give up their data shadow system habit and get on the "single version of the truth" bandwagon.

read the complete post Enterprise Data Management - It's not just for finance any more

The "Force-Field" of Data Governance

Data governance has a big job: establishing the processes, policies, standards, organization, and technologies required to manage and ensure the availability, accessibility, quality, consistency, auditability and security of data in an organization.

In many instances it is seen as too overwhelming or daunting to undertake, like Don Quixote chasing windmills. Too often people are immobilized by analysis paralysis and fail to move forward after initial meetings and excitement. But don’t stop before you get started. Data governance is like the force-field around your data, protecting that "single version of the truth."

read the complete post The "Force-Field" of Data Governance

The ROI of Enterprise Data Management

The ROI from a company’s investment in Enterprise Data Management (EDM) is measured with fairly precise metrics, such as dollars and time savings, faster time-to-market, and increasing sales through more directed marketing (up-sell, cross-sell, better demographic targeting, etc.).

However, there are also benefits that are harder to quantify that may be even more significant, such as governmental and regulatory compliance, financial transparency, improved data consistency and integrity, faster data availability and utilizing performance management to run the business. Even these benefits are not touchy-feely and you need to quantify the impact they will have to your business.

read the complete post The ROI of Enterprise Data Management