Many businesses want better, more accurate data. Reactive businesses want it because of pressure, but many proactive companies want the associated benefits that a little more investment will bring.
Savvy businesses are investing in a new position on their HR roster: the data steward. As data becomes a more pressing issue from both legislative and competitive perspectives, so the role of the data steward is becoming increasingly significant.
Initially, only the largest businesses saw the need to invest in a data steward. Only those businesses realised that they needed someone dedicated to manage, develop and maintain the data standard and to counsel services people on how to best and most effectively use the data. That person, by definition, must thoroughly understand the standard, effectively communicate that knowledge, and be responsible for consistent and balanced review of the standard.
It's a role more advanced than custodian because it is proactive and communicative. Its function is mirrored in the tools that vendors are beginning to supply. On average, 30% of business data is on the mainframe, 10% is outsourced and 80% sits outside the ERP system, which is why businesses need to integrate their systems. They must be rationalised, modernised, synchronised, standardised and analysed. While these functions were distributed in the past through individual tools, vendors are increasingly integrating and synchronising their tools to provide a single data console.
It is from this interface that the data steward drives the unification of people and technology. Without that unification, bad data practices persist and unfortunately for many businesses, particularly those in the services arena, that poor practice is rapidly exposed beyond the business's electronic frontier. Customers are at the sharp end. And they get annoyed when their insurer's life department doesn't recognise them from the short-term vehicle department; when their bank's credit department cannot interrogate the current account department; and when they are routinely offered similar products to those they have already bought. That's the data steward's problem, requiring him to work across divisions, across functions and across technologies.
The data steward's problem
Initially, only the largest businesses saw the need to invest in a data steward.
Mervyn Mooi is director at Knowledge Integration Dynamics.
The way in which product data is recorded in stock management systems may seem an insignificant, local issue. But information from those systems is rolled up into enterprise-wide operating systems, such as ERP, and eventually into management information. That too can be the data steward's problem.
Considering the ease with which data is collected by modern technology systems, it is not surprising that volumes of it have been collected in stores throughout organisations. What organisations now need is a means to sift through it all and use what they need. That is because data describes, regulates and measures all of the other assets an organisation possesses, including human, fixed and consumable assets.
Measurement is at the root of all management and data is at the root of all measurement, which puts it squarely at the centre of the universe. It can also be the data steward's responsibility to ensure that happens.
The data steward's role is still unclear simply because the function crosses industries, businesses, divisions, departments, roles and technologies. A good place to find responsibilities for the data steward is with the master data management programme.
* Mervyn Mooi is director at Knowledge Integration Dynamics.
Share