Who manages your master data management (MDM) software implementation depends on a wide variety of factors, mainly: "What's the problem you're trying to fix, and who's in charge of fixing it?" This assumes you already know that an MDM software implementation is the answer, of course, but it's a great question to ask in any case. Let me give you a couple examples.
- Are people on the shop floor unable to find the parts they need and end up ordering new ones, even though the required parts exist in inventory not a dozen feet away from the manufacturing workstation? It might be a good idea to get the VP of manufacturing or an IT director who works for her into a meeting to discuss how an MDM software implementation can drive semantic reconciliation and data reconciliation for parts data.
- Have incidents of duplicate and triplicate mailings to the same person steadily increased, but now that postage has gone up (again!) the wasted expense is being billed back to the marketing department? A VP of marketing or -- depending on the size of your company -- a segment manager might be a good person to teach about the benefits of an MDM software implementation on campaign management.
- The books don't close until two months after the month ended? While some people blame different pricing for the same product, others admit that the company's management of its financial assets isn't as rigorous as it should be. Furthermore, the amount of manual data reconciliation that has to be done by otherwise senior people has gotten out of control. This would be a good case to make in front of the chief financial officer or one of her management direct reports.
Notice you didn't see the chief information office or director of IT architecture in any of these examples? That's because it's the job of these people to ensure that MDM is the right answer. But the business needs to buy in to MDM, and ultimately businesses need to buy in to an MDM software implementation and make sure it continues to fly!
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