Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth

FIVE MAINSTAY CHALLENGES OF DATA INTEGRATION

It’s harder than it looks. In fact, whether it’s CRM, ERP, supply-chain management, or another enterprise system that touches multiple organizations and affects enterprise business processes, nonintegrated data is frequently the cause of cost overruns, poor time frame estimations, and scrap and rework. We’ve found this to be true across industries, market segments, companies, and projects.

In fact, we’ve found that, rather than lumping the challenges into a big bucket called “We forgot about the data!,” there are five specific data-related issues that are the typical challenges when it comes to integrating customer data for the business.

Challenge 1: The Need for a Different Development Framework

One of the biggest problems with master data management (MDM) efforts is that the teams charged with tackling them use standard implementation methods without understanding the discrete steps involved.

Since, by its very definition, the goal of CDI is to integrate data, many companies assume that they can overlay their standard system development life-cycle or, more commonly, their data warehouse development methods onto a CDI effort. However, as we’ve discussed, data warehouses are intended to address a range of often strategic business requirements, whereas CDI systems are functionally oriented. Thus, the well-worn, requirements-driven business intelligence and data warehouse development methods won’t work for CDI. Indeed, too much ...