The Winds of Change: More Master Data Management Projects Succeeding

Master data management projects are significantly more successful than four years ago, according to a recent CIO UK column. But when they fail, it’s for the same old reasons: internal politics and poor data quality.

The Information Difference, a UK-based market research firm, recently surveyed companies on their MDM adoption, modeling the questions closely after a 2008 survey on the same topic.

In 2008, MDM actually had a pretty unimpressive success rate, with large companies reporting that their MDM implementations were “broadly successful” just 54 percent of the time.

Now, that number is 81 percent, reports Andy Hayler, president and CEO of the Information Difference.

But what hasn’t changed is what causes MDM to fail.

“The major barriers to success in MDM have not changed: internal politics and poor data quality were the most commonly cited issues,” Hayler writes.

Of course, those aren’t the only reasons MDM still nets a nearly 20 percent fail rate.

Manjeet Singh Sawhney, a senior Information Management consultant at the London-based Tata Consultancy Services, recently wrote a post outlining 10 other reasons MDM projects fail.

Some of the list you’ve no doubt heard previously, for example “ignoring the need for business governance.” However, most of it is an interesting blend of hard tech and soft people issues:

• Only staffing the MDM project with technology people
• Being unprepared for organizational changes to business processes
• Neglecting security requirements
• Ignoring agile development principles
• Forgetting to patch, fix and enhance the MDM system

The full post is worth a quick read, but you might want to spend some time exploring this excellent site. The “recent posts” list alone could keep me reading for an hour.