Importance of a company's processes in data management

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Data is only valuable when placed in context, and a company's processes provide important context for how data is used.
The concept of linking a company's processes to data is not new . However, it is currently seeing a resurgence, and it is as important as ever for many data management topics .

Different clients from different sectors working on different data management projects always have something in common: it is very important for all of them to link business priorities with the company processes that support them .

A company's processes come into play with data business owner database in several different scenarios: Master Data Management, Data Governance, Data Quality and Big Data Analytics .



In a digital-first world, maturity is achieved with effective data management


Master Data Management
Master Data Management (MDM) is the discipline that strives to achieve a single version of the truth for the core elements of a business : customer, product, supplier, etc. However, the reality is that a single version of the truth is made up of multiple perspectives on that truth.

Let’s take a common master data domain such as a product as an example. While there is a holistic view of a ‘Product’ with a superset of attributes that supports multiple user groups across the organization, each user group has its own view of what the ‘Product’ information entails and what the use of that data is. Each group across the supply chain can view, create, edit or delete certain pieces of information that make up the ‘Product’ concept. For MDM to be successful, it is important to identify each of these stakeholder groups and work with them to understand their use and requirements around the data domain in question .

One tool that can be helpful is a data element mapping process model. Using a BPMN diagram of a company's processes , you can show stakeholders along a column with their key activities next to them. You could show, for example, a product development lifecycle spanning product development through to product costing, pricing, and market testing.

In this example, certain aspects of the product data will clearly be owned by a particular stakeholder group. For example, the product development team is responsible for defining the product components and assembly instructions. However, when it comes to pricing, supply chain data determines the initial price, but this price can be modified by the marketing process during the market testing phase. Marketing is responsible for naming and describing the products in the catalog.

To track the usage and lifecycle of data items we can use a CRUD array . The CRUD array keeps track of which groups create, read, update, and delete data.

When information is modified by more than one group, it is important to establish the appropriate workflow and governance. For example, both supply chain and marketing are likely to feel that they “own” the correct information. By clearly designing the workflow and data lifecycle, it helps both stakeholders and MDM developers understand the correct data responsibilities for stakeholders and create the appropriate workflow, business rules, security rules, etc. around the solution. In many cases, redundancies and inefficiencies in the process can be identified and improved with the MDM solution, making MDM a business process optimization tool . Often, master data management is as much a company process initiative as it is a data management initiative.