How to organise for MDM?

Have you ever thought through how to build an organisation for master data management?

One of the key issues I always find at customers who are struggeling with their quality of master data is that their organisation is not really prepared to deal with master data in a sustainable manner.

In my view Gartner has done quite a good job in proposing a generic organisation for master data management. Actually this organisation implies that you are introducing a new business process - Master Data Management.

Please look at the following orgchart - this is how I remember the generic organisation Gartner is proposing:

The generic MDM organisation

One of the key ideas is that business has to lead the MDM organisation. A quick description of the different roles & responsibilities:

1. The Information Governance Board should consist of executive level sponsors. They should  set and enforce information management policies. In this board you should have representatives from the business - that is key - but you also should have a representation from your IT executives in here.
2. The MDM Team is responsible to manage the MDM program and who authors and maintains the master data. If you are also implementing GDSN or any other means to collect item data from your suppliers the supplier onboarding and communication is also a key task for this team.
3. Data Stewards sit in the business unit and they are responsible for data quality monitoring, improvement and issue resolution. They are NOT maintaining the data themselves but work closely with the MDM Team to get the master data quality on to the level the business needs it.
4. The MDM Infrastructure Team is a kind of virtual team responsible for all aspects of the IT implementation needed for the MDM business process.
5. In the GDSN context I only want to highlight the importance of the Data Modeling and Information Architecture role. If participating in the GDSN this role is key because it is the link to the GSMP process and defining change requests and also anticipating and adopting the changes coming through the GSMP / GDSN.

Please take this organisation template as what it is - only a template. In real life you have to look at your current organisation and see how you can adopt the different roles and responsibilities within your organisation.

But also be aware - you want to introduce a new business process which you did not have in the past.

And if your organisation is multinational or even global I will discuss in one of my next posts what impact that has on the MDM organisation.