Strategies and technologies to boost
behind-the scenes efficiencies
“We cannot have situations
where lack of data context
confuses a user, which could
either cause mistakes in
analysis or execution.”
— John Keddy
Aflac Inc.
corporate retention to agency CRM. But
we did not want to go through the route
of having one major centralized ware-
house that’s going take seven years to
build, and by the time we got there, it
would be seven years out of date.”
Still, many MDM efforts are springing.
At Columbus, Ga.-based Aflac Inc., a
metadata repository built within a depart-
ment is paving the way for an enterprise-
wide MDM effort. “This group wouldn’t
have known all the tenets of master data
management, but they had a need to treat
some data elements in a fundamentally
different and more controlled fashion,”
says John Keddy, VP of IT application ser-
vices. “Their approach might be catego-
rized as a ‘passive metadata repository ap-
proach,’ but still provides great value. We
are actively reviewing how these process-
es and overall approach may scale up be-
yond that department.”
As companies engage in MDM ap-
proaches—moving toward building a
gold master copy that the entire enter-
prise can reference—lines of communi-
cations open up as well. “When you’re a
100-year-old insurance company, you’ve
been doing the right thing for the lon-
gest time,” says Protective’s Underwood.
“But we had areas that really were not
directly aligned, with siloing of our in-
formation. We had vertical silos aligned
to the products themselves. Annuity data
systems stayed with annuities. We had
the same problem with the life side. No
one necessarily needed to talk to each
other; there was no real consensus across
the systems. People had to be hands-on
with the information.”
At Aflac, executives see the movement
to an MDM approach in terms of the
ability to provide a reliable, enterprise-
wide definition of operational metrics
that are relevant to the business. “Every
metric is beautiful to its mother—but
not every metric is key at the strategic
level,” Keddy says. “We now have a cross-
functional group identifying which met-
rics are truly key—and what MDM pro-
cesses or operations will apply.”
This is where strong data governance
can make or break the success of an
MDM program. The challenge for MDM
efforts is that MDM is a business initia-
tive, versus an IT or data management
initiative. Schwartz cites Gartner statis-
tics that predict that 66% of MDM
programs over the next four to five
years will fail to deliver business value.
MDM efforts require an owner for mas-
ter data assets guided by a data steward-
ship program. “It’s very easy just to fall
into a pattern of a huge technology in-
vestment in MDM,” he cautions. “You
have to make up-front investments in
process, governance and technology.”
efforts. “We must ensure the data, and
derivations, are done in a manner that
can be consistently produced by the us-
ers,” Keddy says. “We cannot have situ-
ations where lack of data context con-
fuses a user, which could either cause
data. Some of that process is automat-
ed, as part of our actual acquisition of
data. And some of it is sitting down
and telling businesspeople, ‘we un-
derstand you have a new product
coming out. Help us describe that
product as were going to use it from
a governance perspective.” The com-
pany also employed tools to help, in-
cluding San Francisco-based Embar-
cadero Technologies Inc.’s ER/Studio.
For more about MDM, search “Banking on Billions for
MDM Software” at www.insurancenetworking.com.
GOVERNANCE
Insurers seeing success so far with MDM
are taking pains to ensure that business
users are intimately involved in MDM
mistakes in analysis or execution. As we
identify the key metrics of strategic im-
portance, our group will be proposing
a unique level of governance and over-
sight for those metrics. We must have
confidence with those metrics that re-
flect upon the core of our business and
know we can consistently rely on their
accuracy. We must provide a platform
where we can produce analytics as op-
posed to endless debates over confi-
dence in data that ultimately get re-
solved by who produced what.”
Data governance is key to Protec-
tive’s MDM initiatives as well. All
MDM activities are addressed through
two formal councils that regularly in-
teract to reconcile data management
issues. “You can lose a lot of time try-
ing to get two people to reconcile,”
says Underwood. “We sit down and
go through all those data elements
that haven’t been described, mapped
or quantified and qualified. We talk
about how we want to manage that
tion services, and everybody’s happy.”
Getting an MDM effort off the
ground requires business participation
at a number of levels. To get started,
companies need to “create a vision
statement and plan for enterprise
MDM,” says Imhoff. “The vision state-
ment needs to address the business rea-
son for this environment, as well as de-
velop a big-picture roadmap, but also
focus on short-term projects.” The or-
ganization also needs to “create a for-
mal MDM function, with reporting
lines of responsibility, and procedures
on resolving issues,” she adds. Finally,
Imhoff says, “incorporate business peo-
ple into an MDM function. Data stew-
ards, data governance specialists and
subject-matter experts need to lead with
way, with IT playing a supporting role,”
she says. “Active and vocal executive
support is essential.” INN
