Recognising the importance data plays in the overall success of a company will be up for discussion at the ITWeb BI Conference, to be held on 25 and 26 February, in Bryanston, Johannesburg.
Three South African companies will talk about how they are addressing the data management challenges of BI.
On day two of the conference, in the track titled: “Data quality, integration and MDM”, attendees will listen to representatives from Telkom, Premier Foods and Accenture, focusing on the issues related to data and BI.
Practice manager at BI Practice (a Sybase company), Estelle de Beer, will chair the session, and a Telkom representative selected by BI Practice will discuss how to achieve a best-in-class approach to data quality.
Alan Brickett, business data architect at Premier Foods, will present a real-life case study on overcoming the challenges of data integration. It will explore merging data from various systems in order to operate from a consolidated organisational view.
According to Brickett, data integration is what can make or break a BI project when unclean data is the culprit. “There is a need to provide functional BI while being able to correct integration problems, however, still maintaining an adequate expectation of truth,” he says.
His goal, through his presentation, is to provide insights into how to overcome these challenges. “The idea is for people to take away a method, concept and understanding of the integration management and correction loop that I will be discussing. This session is slightly more technical, but aimed at the people who need to know how BI projects need integration management for success,” he says.
Yolanda Komen, senior manager at Accenture Information Management Services, will discuss master data management (MDM) and how it can enhance the BI strategy. Komen will explore the importance of building flexibility into an MDM methodology to ensure records can be updated with new information as time goes by. She will also discuss the cost implications and benefits of MDM.
“The demand for MDM is rapidly growing today because companies' data integration challenges are immense and constantly growing, due to fragmented and inconsistent master data and lack of data standardisation. Significant resources are spent on finding, understanding, cleansing and reconciling data, while effective planning within and across business units is heavily dependent on integrated data. High performing companies today are totally dependent on correct, complete and consistent information on which to base their decisions,” says Komen.
“By implementing an MDM strategy, there is increased control over mission-critical data, smoother integration between systems, better access to cross-organisational information, resulting in a more efficient workforce, more informed decisions and 'one version of the truth'."
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