The Art of MDM Workflow

The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected
– Sun Tzu, the Art of War

As organizations begin evaluating and leveraging MDM beyond their analytical needs and start to view operational MDM as a cornerstone of their overall strategy, the question of governance and workflow becomes a vitally important topic, which cannot be neglected. For many, workflow and business process management (BPM) is a well ploughed road, with established vendors such as Lombardi (a Siperian partner) providing robust offerings. So the marketplace would have you believe in a simplistic view

Workflow Tool + MDM Hub = Victory and Mission Accomplished

but the “Art” of MDM workflow actually lies within the subtle, yet flexible nature of the MDM platform itself, the ability to handle state. Not the State as referred to in Sun Tzu’s quote but the state of the data or record as it progresses through a business process towards its ultimate destination. A significant concern for organizations looking to enable their MDM Hub as a gateway for system of entry of all master data is the ability to enforce the right level of governance through checks and balances as additions and updates to data are made by business users. A workflow tool functioning independently is designed to easily track and route the operations and approval processes to the correct defined individuals or groups. However, a key requirement of the MDM Hub, in concert with such “in-transition” workflow activities, is to be able to manage the changing state of the data.

For example, when new data is created, the MDM Hub should be able to track its state as “pending approval” or any number of additional states before its final destination – becoming the golden master data record. This built-in capability should permit complete control over the availability of the data, framing it as not yet blessed for enterprise-wide public consumption, but continuing to allow the Hub to determine and resolve conflicts that might occur. In our example, if a second addition is attempted for the same record while the previous entry is currently in the approval process, the MDM Hub’s matching capabilities would highlight such a conflict, thereby preventing duplicate effort or accidental overwriting of data. Therefore, in order to succeed, the workflow tool must leverage the unique data state management capabilities of a MDM Hub. Only then can we claim victory and mission accomplished.

Originally posted on the Siperian Blog

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