Data Quality Management is the first step towards implementing a MDM Solution
Recently I moved back to my own country after spending couple of years in Sweden. Thus I contacted my bank to change my communication address. For this I called the bank service center and told my new address for updation. All's well till now. After waiting for some days I got address change confirmation from bank and I was horrified to see that bank maintained my current address as Flat no XX, Bldg XX, Road XX, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Stockholm, Sweden. I was really wondering that where I am actually! Really surprised that whether I am in India or Sweden!
As-Is situation
This looks quite simple and also it’s quite easy to make such mistakes. However my emphasis is that the repercussions are many of these small problems. Some of them which I can think of are:
Also there was one more classic example of lack of master data within a bank itself. I am customer of a reputed bank for saving account, shares trading account as well as credit card. All three accounts are even linked to my net banking. Bank automatically takes my credit card bill from my saving account. Also Bank used to take money automatically from my saving account for Shares purchases/sell. Thus bank was completely aware of my all accounts, their linking and their single owner. However to my horror when I changed my address in my saving account, I thought the bank will automatically change my credit card and trading account address as well. I guess everyone will agree on this. However this was not the case as my bank told me that I have to change address of everything separately since they maintain all the accounts separately.
All this is because of small reason that my bank doesn’t maintain single version of customer master data across systems thus their master data is lacking quality.
1. Bank has to spend on international courier to send the statement which is 30 times costlier. Thus bank spent a lot of money wasted on postal cost.
2. I don't receive my statements on time.
3. My cheque book got misplaced. It was a huge risk which could result in money loss and fraud.
4. As customer; I got impression that if they can not manage such simple activities like addresses than how they will manage my money properly. They can easily transfer my hard earned money to wrong hands.
5. Similarly I won’t get my credit card statements and other bills on time which could further put loss to bank for delayed payments since bank to bear those losses.
6. Didn’t received important documents related to banking which were required to be submitted to government agencies.
These were quite simple examples of non-compliance of Data Quality.
Data Quality is defined on the basis of these parameters:
- completeness
- validity
- consistency
- timeliness
- accuracy
There are several ways to force and achieve data quality in the organization by implementing MDM solution to ensure (Master) Data Quality.
a. Data validation by using validation rules and Assignments......
• Warning message => you can continue your work and even save the record despite the validation error
• Error message => saving of the record isn't possible, as long as the error persists
b. Workflow - With the help of workflow, approving the new records as well the modifications. It can even suggest the duplicates using matching strategy.
c. Matching strategy and Merging – to identify duplicates and improving master data quality by merging them.
d. Key Mapping – Key mapping provides the base for EIM across landscape and systems.
c. Search - using free flow search, users can search whether the records still exists and the information is accurate information.
d. Third Party software’s to optimize the Data Quality
e. Normalization
Company : SATYAM Computer Services Limited
Role: Projects Lead / Project Manager
Above shared views are my personal views and might not synchronize with my company views.
