How MDM and Data Governance Work Together and Why You Need Both

Data drives today’s businesses, but that data is only useful if it is accessible, actionable, and accurate. Unfortunately, in many organizations, master data isn’t managed well, leading to inconsistencies and overlaps in data records across business applications. Over time, these quality issues devalue your data and impede critical business insight.

A master data management strategy that includes data governance can help you take high volumes of master data and create a single source of business intelligence that covers everything from hierarchies to chart of accounts structures.

Why You Need Both Master Data Management and Data Governance

Traditionally, data governance responsibilities belonged primarily to IT, but the role has evolved. Today, data is the driving force behind many business decisions and outcomes. It now makes sense for businesses to take the lead in governing data to ensure the company’s master data is accurate and trustworthy. 

By aligning data governance with master data management, business and IT work in concert to deploy consistent data across upstream and downstream applications and systems. This alignment enables organizations to: 

• Streamline business processes by replacing manual processes with automated workflows for fewer errors and improved efficiency.
• Increase visibility and monitor the status of metadata requests in real time to identify bottlenecks and errors.
• Guarantee auditability by creating a single source of truth that ensures compliance with regulatory rules and requirements.
• Improve data accuracy and trust with validations that align data points across systems to prevent failed transactions and reconciliation issues.

Without both a data governance program and a master data management strategy in place, organizations have little control over their data and lose a significant amount of their business value. 

How to Implement a Successful Master Data Management and Data Governance Strategy

A combined master data management and data governance strategy protects your organization’s data accuracy, quality, and trust by ensuring there is a process in place for making changes and deploying those changes consistently throughout all subscribing applications.

If you are just getting started with your data governance and master data management initiative—or you want to increase your organization’s maturity—there are three key elements that can make a significant impact on your effort.

Promote a culture of business/IT collaboration.

Integrating data governance into existing master data management processes requires a strategic blend of technology and business intelligence, which can only be accomplished through open, effective collaboration between business and IT.

This may require a culture shift within the organization, but you can help smooth the way by:

• Including members of both groups on the governance committee and in data stewardship roles
• Creating a glossary to ensure everyone is speaking the same language
• Centralizing data governance and management processes to break down silos and foster transparency

Document the dispute resolution process.

With multiple stakeholders across different departments involved in the data governance and management processes, disagreements over things such as how to format customer records or standardize hierarchies are inevitable. 

Having a clearly defined, strictly enforced dispute resolution process in place from the start will remove emotion from the equation. Handling all disagreements according to documented policies—not opinions—reduces accusations of inequity and ensures outcomes are consistent.

Track data quality metrics.

Combining data governance and master data management helps organizations increase data quality by centralizing, integrating, validating, and governing master data across applications. But how do you know if your initiative is succeeding?

Tracking data quality metrics is an essential factor in determining how well your processes are supporting data accuracy, completeness, consistency, and integrity. Key metrics to watch include:

• Percent of correct entries in specific datasets 
• Number of required data fields completed
• Consistency of data values across different systems
• Number of data issues found and corrected
• Financial impact of fixing those issues

EPMware Unifies Master Data Management and Data Governance in a Single Platform

With seamless integration with many of the most popular ERP, EPM, and CPM applications and a centralized master data hub to enforce data governance standards in real time, EPMware lets you control your master data management and data governance workflows.

EPMware’s all-in-one solution combines powerful technology with simplicity to enable business users to manage, model, build, and maintain fully dynamic and scalable workflows that visually define business processes and enforce them across multiple application types in the cloud and on-premise.

Implementing a master data management solution that also supports governance efforts will help ensure master data is consistent, visible, and validated in both upstream and downstream systems so you always have data you trust.

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