8CIOReview | | DECEMBER 2020IN MY OPINIONWELL, HOW DID I (WE) GET HERE?I can honestly say that my favorite musical group is The Talking Heads. I've always been attracted to their catchy riffs as well as their insightful and sometimes quirky lyrics. I find that songs such as "Once in a Lifetime" have several lines that I find myself muttering at times.What, might you ask, does this have to do with Enterprise Information Management? Without a formal data strategy to guide the work of your data team (Business Steering group, Data office, and IT), "you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile," asking yourself, "Well, how did I(we) get here?"In past Data Warehousing efforts, organizations copied data into a collocated environment and worried about connecting the tables and fields as needed. This created a proliferation of data copies, not reproductions, as they were out of synch from a timing aspect or individually manipulated with additionally created fields. These tables lacked good documentation and metadata, and so when someone didn't understand what they were looking at, they created their version to fit their requirements.Over time, without a data strategy and "Letting the days go by," the data warehouses increased in size and complexity, and only those with the proficiency, gumption, or concerns for job security had the keys to unlock the warehouse. Allowing this to continue obliged the data warehouses to remain in the hands of a select few and be interpreted a small population.Enter the formal Data Strategy and the evolving technology to manage/automate the approach. The pathway to understanding what business problems you are trying to solve, whether they be growth, efficiency, or risk management issues, is all about understanding your Business Partners and Initiatives' requirements. (Think of this as the "Why?") These are the primary users/manipulators/explorers of the data and could be Data Scientists, model builders, business analysts, or report generators. They are trying to get information/answers (Who, Where, and When) into the hands of the decision-makers in the organization, preferably in a way that is easy to comprehend/understand. This could take the form of a spreadsheet for interpretation or visualization that tells a graphical story.One of the most exciting items that have been maturing at an increasing rate is Mastering or data integration. This potential real-time integration of data at a level that looks across all customers, products, objects, or locations, for example, allows for an understanding of cross-functional or interdisciplinary information. Having a repository that integrates these views allows consistency of a single version of the truth, access to most current information, accuracy across several lenses, secure information, and roles-based access, to name just a few. With their requirements in hand, you now understand what data needs to be integrated as well as the frequency. (This would be the "How?") The proliferation of new ETL and Mastering tools leveraging Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have lent insightful capabilities and created integration paths of data into a By Louis DiModugno, Chief Data Officer with HSBLouis DiModugno
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