A joint presentation from Statoil’s Eldar Bjørge and IPL’s Chris Bradley at the 2013 IRM UK Master Data Management conference in London earlier this year offered advice on selecting a master data management (MDM) architecture. IPL reports that 85% of supply chain management service ‘incidents’ are due to master data errors. These come from siloed applications and data stores which lack a common terminology. IPL has provided Statoil with a 13 point methodology to help make a business case for MDM. This includes an MDM maturity scale where Statoil is currently between level 1 and 2 (MDM gaining recognition) with the objective of a level 4-5 (MDM defined, adopted and managed).
The authors observe that business projects won’t wait for all encompassing master data to be delivered. The answer is for MDM subsets, delivered ‘just in time’ as projects start up. In E&P, MDM is about ‘compromise and the art of the possible.’
Architectural choices are important. MDM can be single or multi domain with various trade-offs. As MDM spans more business domains it loses in domain specificity. An enterprise-wide MDM ‘hub’ is not the only choice. A middleware MDM solution may be appropriate if data is stored across multiple source systems. ETL-based synchronization with an operational data store is another option. A stand-alone application-neutral MDM store with an industry specific data model appears to be the solution of choice. This is achieved via a ‘data virtualization’ approach providing a ‘360°’ view of constituent repositories. More from IPL and IRM-UK.
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