So You've Inherited Some MDM. What Now?

Although commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) master data management software has become quite popular in recent years, many companies have developed their own in-house solutions for collecting, validating, and governing master data. Bill Brooks, the global chief data architect for Mercer Inc., has guided two such projects, one from its inception and another through its ongoing evolution to support a changing business, including evaluating a possible migration to a COTS solution.

Bill will discuss:

pros and cons of a homegrown solution
lessons learned in two successful case studies
a basic phased approach to manage the scope of such a significant effort
and tips for collecting information and evaluating the options in a build-versus-buy decision.

Bill Brooks has been modeling, managing, and integrating data since 1995, beginning at CID Associates developing application databases, then at Children's Hospital Boston as manager of the Decision Support Systems Group. He managed data integration before becoming Enterprise Data Architect for MFS Investment Management. Bill is now Global Chief Data Architect at Mercer, where he is developing a firm-wide data architecture practice.

Bill's background includes traditional relational database design, data warehouse design and implementation, and enterprise application integration using a variety of ETL, message broker, and service bus approaches, and he has recently focused on building Data Architecture capabilities and driving big data and advanced analytics programs.