On Apple and Customer Data

Dec 01, 2011 by Phil Simon

Data doesn’t really come to mind first when considering the historic legacy of Steve Jobs and Apple. Instead, people think of the following questions:

• Was Jobs gifted at recognizing design?
• Did he redefine industries?
• Did he rankle more than a few people both inside and outside of Apple?

The Customer Domain

Sep 06, 2011 by David Loshin

I often joke that the most dangerous question for a set of data professionals is “What is a customer?” This always gets a laugh, and I know why: the amount of effort expended in trying to come up with a single definition of customer can be astounding, especially when there is never a resolution to the question. I am not going to resolve it in this blog post either, but I do hope to challenge some presumptions.

Core Data Domains and Their Use in Analytics

Aug 30, 2011 by David Loshin

I have a particular interest in understanding the value proposition for executing data management tasks, especially when it comes to business analytics. This dovetails with my interest in master data management, but less from a technical standpoint and more from the perspective of what I have taken to call “information utility.” The idea is that as we continue to re-purpose data for more uses, he value of the information is related to both the ease with which it is incorporated into a value-generating business process and the degree to which the data can contribute to increased performance.

Data Quality Business Impact Categories

Mar 09, 2010 by David Loshin

From a philosophical perspective we try to help our clients figure out the relationship between data issues and achieving their business objectives. From a practical perspective this requires a means for linking business issues to data failures. A big challenge is bridging the gap between IT staff, who understand the data side, and the subject area experts, who understand the business side. Our approach is to try to simplify the analysis process by introducing business impact categories that can be affected by data issues, then use those categories as a guide for assessing where the gaps exist.

Where Data Quality and Politics Unite

Jan 18, 2010 by Phil Simon

Let’s kick off the new year by being vaguely controversial and invoking politics in our typical discussions around data quality and data governance. I’m no longer new at this whole thing and it’s time to stir the pot a bit.

DQ Indifference: The Right Wing

Laissez faire practitioners believe in a “hands off approach” to DQ. This attitude is typically exemplified by statements or actions that disregard data integrity. You may hear the following from these DQ libertarians:

• We’ll fix it after we go live.
• That’s not a big deal.
• That’s (insert name of other department)’s problem.

Data Chaos and Five Truisms of Data Quality

Dec 07, 2009 by Phil Simon

I am very pleased to be joining a forum with so many experts. I only hope that I can maintain the level of excellent content established by David, Dylan, Jim, Jill, Joyce, Mike, and Robert. By the way, Jim and I were talking recently about how so many of us look alike. Yes, we are actually different people.

Rather than jump right in with Data Quality 101, I decided to do a little homework before appearing foolish in my first post. I’ll save my foolishness for later posts.

Simple Counts for Small Businesses

Jun 18, 2009 by David Loshin

Before I can analyze my customers, I have to know who my customers are. I need to know a few things for this:

• Who is a customer?
• Where is customer data stored?
• How many customers do I have?

  Of course, there are a lot more things I would ultimately need to know, but from first principles, I cannot analyze anything that I can’t count. So what other simple counts do I need? Products? Sales? Orders? Employees? Supplies? Inventory? Without a doubt, you need this data to run your business, whether from a revenue standpoint or an operational management standpoint.

Challenge: How Do You Value MDM?

Jan 19, 2006 by David Loshin

In a recent conversation with a colleague, he mentioned to me that they were purchasing a CDI solution to deploy across their worldwide enterprise. He mentioned, though, that when their team tried to sell it as a data quality solution, the management response was tepid at best. Instead, they reconstructed their proposal in terms of a sales and marketing initiative for their retail sales representatives, the management bought into the concept.