CIOs focused on master data management see information quality, governance as key issues
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/1/2006 12:00:00 AM MST
According to 2005 software investment surveys of CIOs released by New York-based Merrill Lynch, better business intelligence (BI) consistently ranks among the top three business user priorities. Knightsbridge Solutions, a Chicago-based BI and data warehousing services provider, offers supporting information in a report that lists 10 trends expected to shape 2006 BI strategies.
The Knightsbridge report is based on a survey of its clients and industry practice leaders. Information quality once again topped the list.
"Many manufacturers are struggling to get timely, accurate information at their fingertips," says Jim Wirth, senior principal for Knightsbridge's manufacturing and technology vertical. "[They know] how quickly they can get in trouble around quality issues, with different silos providing different answers. So it is imperative to have rigorous controls around data. When it comes down to it, the corporate data they have is key to everything they're trying to achieve, from improving products to [enhancing] customer and supplier relations."
For this reason, greater emphasis on master data management and data governance came in at No. 2 and No. 3 for their critical roles in managing customers, products, and vendors; and directing corporate efforts to ensure information-quality standards.
"With governance, more senior executives are getting involved because they are on the line, and change management can't be driven by IT. Governance requires sponsorship where it is driven by the business," concludes Wirth.
These are the top trends in BI for 2006:
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Information qualityrequires a program to improve quality via systematic measurement, iterative problem identification and resolution, and reverification.
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Master data managementinvolves iterative monitoring, evaluation, and validation.
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Data governancesets the strategic direction for information-quality standards and processes, and ensures compliance.
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Enterprise-level BIrequires significant organizational and process changes.
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Regulatory compliancerequires looking at issues holistically to determine how BI fits as an enterprise solution.
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Enterprise data transparencynecessitates the ability to track any data element to its source to ensure it is aggregated properly and rationalized across all business processes.
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Actionable BI:A gap exists between data gathered and the metrics for measuring and driving performance.
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Service-oriented architecturerequires modeling the relationship between services and data models to attain a data view of services.
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Rightsourcingis prompting companies to implement analytics to assess the value of offshore BI projects.
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Semi-structured and unstructured data issues are addressed by master data enablers related to ERP suites and content management tools, which specify how to add contextual information to databases. The next challenge is how to integrate such data so it can be analyzed.
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