Master Data Management Strategy; Balancing Control with Self-Service

This is the continuation of the transcript of DM Radio’s program titled “The Consumerization of Business Intelligence: How and Why.”

Byron Igoe:  Yeah, actually I think I was on another DM Radio segment last year, talking about master data management and some other topics around governance and controls in a world where you need to still enable self-service.   InetSoft has their own ways of addressing this.

 We can support the IT layer, where they have got tight controls on things,  but enable self-service for the users.  But I am sure that various vendors are going to come out with their own solutions to the problem as well.

Eric Kavanagh:  Right.  And Tracie, do you want to chime in?

Tracie Kambies:  Yeah. I was going to say that I was on that same DM Radio last year as well, and I think that the same concepts apply to the Big Data space and making things more consumable, the data more consumable.  I think that what we are going to be seeing is different models for how you leverage it and different organizations are going to create these hybrid models. 

Some organizations might be able to be more centralized, in that the data is served up through Big Data solutions and then consumed from that centralized organization and shifted out.  But then there is this decentralized, more categorical type of management, governance, and ownership of that data, there can be more of the federated models. 

So I think that it's just going to depend on the business needs.  What does the business really need and what are they trying to do with it? What are the fashions and trends that they are going to need to stay in front of?  And the speed of their business is going to have a lot to say about how they structure their ownership models of the data.

I think the other big point I would say about this is that it's becoming an environment in the business world and across our industry where collaboration is happening more frequently.  And so ownership is going to be about who is collaborating together and how they determine it at that point in time.  One business problem that people are trying to solve is offering health care.  Health care providers and insurance companies are working together better so that patients have better care and better preventative care. 

Well, there is a lot of information ownership going on there over who owns the patient data.  Well, I think that if they do decide to collaborate and our data solutions can offer the information faster, better, and in a more consumable way, their ownership is now joint.  So it's an interesting concept.  I think that there is a lot of growth and opportunity in the space for people to define it based on what they are trying to do and what they are really trying to deliver to their end consumers.

Eric Kavanagh:  Right, that's a brilliant point.  Let’s go ahead and push the last spot.  We will be right back with the roundtable.  You are listening to DM Radio.