Survival-101: Making DM Relevant
to the Enterprise.
Data management must be visible and relevant to
the enterprise and its executives for it to survive.
The temptation to cut DM staff, or outsource it is
far too strong in some organizations. Executives
generally don't understand data architecture (a severe
abstraction) nor meta-data. They may accept data
warehousing (when the project has been a success).
How do you make data
management relevant?
We will review a 5-tier model of IT to show the
widening range of functions (and personality types)
involved in IT. We will show how data architecture
fits in and continues to be a crucial aspect of the
business. Data architecture compatibility thus becomes
a key criteria for the evaluation and selection of
business software applications (such as ERP packages).
Often these decisions are made at too high a level,
and DM is consulted too late.
We will look at ways to use DM (and the data warehouse)
to "stay engaged and immersed" in the life
of the enterprise. Introverts are at risk. You must
be out there, listening to what decisions and issues
are confronting the enterprise, and offering direct
and immediate solutions--not merely "back office" support
for the DBA and programming projects. We will look
at some simple techniques in exploiting meta-data
and data warehousing to make the DM function irreplaceable.
Michael Scofield is a popular speaker
and author with expertise in data architecture, data
warehousing and data quality. He is Assistant Professor,
Health Information Management at Loma Linda University
in
southern California.
Previously, he was Vice President
and Manager of Information Quality for Home Savings
of America (Los Angeles). He holds an MBA degree
from UCLA.
His articles on data architecture and data quality
techniques have been published in Information Week,
IBI System Journal, Data Management Review, and
the Database
Newsletter. His speaking engagements include DAMA-International conferences,
Meta-data Conferences in London and the U.S., various DAMA chapters, DB2 user
groups, and The Data Warehousing Institute. He also writes humor, published
in the Los Angeles Times and other journals
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