Data is the most valuable commodity a business has – it’s really a new kind of currency for the digital era. As such, it’s critical to ensure data can be trusted regardless of where it originates or how it may change.
In order to effectively build and manage that trust, organizations need to expand ownership of key data characteristics beyond traditional IT to include business stakeholders who can become “citizen data stewards.”
Data Runs Business Today
When we think about how we use data in our organizations, most of us start off thinking about data collection. Then our minds turn to storage. We move on to consider queries and reports that support any number of needs; operational metrics, business justifications, supply chain status, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), compliance and security … the list goes on.
Everyone connected to the digital economy creates, interacts with and changes data either as part of their workday or home life. At the office we might be the ruler of our own functional island, where we have a very specific and somewhat possessive view of what is important for ‘our data.’ But behind the scenes, apps, systems, machine learning, AI, devices and people are all tweaking data along the way. Business data is never really at rest. And, it’s never really ‘ours.’
Data Gets Out of Sync
Here’s a typical scenario that I’m sure will sound familiar. Say you’re in purchasing, looking up a trading partner with whom you do business. When you search, you get more than one result: John Smith and John H. Smith. Same address, but different phone numbers.
The purchasing team input the original record for John Smith. Then marketing ran a campaign and John Smith added his middle initial and gave a different phone number when he filled in the lead-gen form. Now there are two records representing the same person – data quality has been compromised. And there are countless variations on this theme.
Traditional Master Data Management
For over a decade, businesses responded to these out-of-sync scenarios by embarking on a Master Data Management (MDM) project, using tools that originated in on-premise architectures and siloed systems.
The idea was to rationalize and clean ALL the data from ALL the systems, determine a system of record and create a golden record that was the single source of truth for each entity. Problem was, the undertaking was so massive and centralized that it might take years to complete … or the project could end up totally scrapped.
Meanwhile, with the omni-present march of digital transformation, the essential need for a single source of truth for the entities or ‘nouns’ of your business is even more crucial now than it was ten years ago.
The Citizens Get Involved
At Boomi, we are starting to hear stories from our customers extolling the virtues of breaking down monolithic MDM projects into bite-sized, agile pieces to drive incremental success with more achievable wins.
In order to accomplish their goals, these companies have extended their data quality initiatives beyond their technology teams to include key business owners.
This trend is being seen across the market as the need to connect data and business results escalates. One indicator is the increase in chief data officers and the charter they operate by. Camelot Consulting Group estimates that 90 percent of large global companies will have a chief data officer by the end of 2020. Often, CDOs report into the CEO so that they can more effectively align data stewardship and quality to business results.
A primary success factor for these emerging use cases is an easy-to-implement, custom capability that empowers business folks to become citizen data stewards, able to define and orchestrate their master data and truly deliver the business outcomes they expect. In this new world order, a much broader set of individuals have skin in the game, resulting in an authentic team approach, which in turn leads to better data quality at a faster pace with real business relevance.
Connect Your Data With Your Data Stewards
Boomi and its customers are leading the way to innovative master data management strategies and Boomi Master Data Hub with Flex is the perfect solution to connect your data with your citizen data stewards.
Hub with Flex lets you jump start your data quality initiatives by extending engagement with business stakeholders, increasing operational efficiency for practitioners, hardening security and enabling workflow automation. Hub with Flex decreases time to value and accelerates your business outcomes with pre-built workflow templates that deliver:
- Inclusive data stewardship
- Customized data onboarding interfaces
- Actionable insight into data quality
- Increased security with advanced approvals
To learn more about how Boomi Hub with Flex can help improve your data quality management, contact a Boomi integration expert today.