Courtesy of David Waddington of Information Management

Master data management has moved from being the new kid on the block to now be recognized as a mature and accepted technology widely regarded as essential for delivering reliable business data. It has often been said that data governance is key to successful master data management, but is it? There is scant information available on the approach being adopted by organizations that have implemented both data governance and MDM.  

In late 2011, The Information Difference initiated a survey, sponsored by Pitney Bowes Software, aimed at better understanding the views of businesses regarding their current data governance and MDM initiatives. In particular we wanted to get feedback from respondents who have both data governance activities and MDM projects, to see to what extent the two really are linked.  

Approximately 110 respondents from across the world completed the survey, with 71 percent from North America (including Canada), 23 percent from Europe and the remainder (6 percent) from the rest of the world. Almost two-thirds (66 percent) of the respondents were from larger organizations with annual revenues greater than U.S. $1 billion.  

The average age of MDM programs was reported as just less than five years and that of data governance programs around four years. Some 64 percent of the organizations surveyed reported that they currently have both live data governance and MDM programs. So it appears that data governance and MDM programs were started around the same time and can now be considered as relatively mature. Clearly organizations have understood the message that the two initiatives are closely linked.  

Thirty-nine percent of respondents set up their data governance and MDM programs together (see figure 1 at left), which in our experience is good practice. Interestingly, 27 percent implemented data governance only after they had started their MDM program. We suggest that this may well have been in response to issues (such as inconsistent data definitions and business rules) encountered when trying to roll out their MDM program. Perhaps surprisingly, only 23 percent did data governance first, which from experience is the best approach of all.

Encouragingly, for the majority (63 percent) of data governance programs, the scope and context includes MDM, but is in many cases much broader. So, in most cases data governance and MDM are closely intertwined.

One-quarter (25 percent) of the organizations surveyed set up their data governance program directly to support MDM, whereas 19 percent told us that the key driver was to support business intelligence initiatives.

However, only about half the respondents considered their data governance programs to have been at least moderately successful, and only 10 percent told us that the data governance program was very successful.  Fifty-four percent of MDM programs were reported to be at least moderately successful, with 19 percent recording that their MDM program was unsuccessful.  

Despite the relatively modest success rates, a resounding 69 percent felt that the program initiatives were mutually supportive. One respondent noted, "I do believe you can't have a successful MDM program without data governance."

Interestingly, those data governance programs which were driven by IT alone reported 50 percent "fairly successful" or above. In the case of those that were either driven by the business alone or jointly, 62 percent were "fairly successful" or better. This suggests that data governance initiatives are more likely to succeed if they are led either by the business alone or jointly with IT.  

Improved business intelligence reporting was afforded top ranking as the key benefit from these programs.  Clearly this is an area that is still very much on the radar of organizations.  

The results from this survey lend support to the view that implementing data governance alongside (or prior to) MDM programs is indeed important to delivering a successful MDM program.