Master Data Management is no shiny object. But like many traditional IT practices, MDM is being severely tested – and rendered all the more strategic – by digitalization and rising data volumes. Originally published at https://www.eckerson.com/articles/five-master-data-management-best-practices-for-enterprises

The rise of machine learning has placed a premium on finding new sources of data to fuel predictive models. But acquiring external data is often expensive and many data sets are rife with errors and difficult to combine with internal data. But that’s going to change in 2020. To help us understand the scale, scope, and dimensions of emerging data marketplaces is Justin Langseth, one of the visionaries in our space. Justin is a VP at Snowflake responsible for the Snowflake Data Exchange.  Prior to Snowflake, Justin was the technical founder and CEO/CTO of 5 data technology startups: Claraview (sold to Teradata), Zoomdata (sold to Logi Analytics), Clarabridge, Strategy.com, and Augaroo. He has 25 years of experience in business intelligence, natural language processing, big data, and AI.

Data quality and leadership trust levels may not seem connected, but they’re inextricably linked. Here’s why ... Originally published at https://www.eckerson.com/articles/using-data-quality-to-build-trust-in-the-business-leaders

Data is critical for learning about the needs of the market, product bugs and issues, competitive solutions, and many other things. As such, analytics plays an important role in the innovation process. Originally published at https://www.eckerson.com/articles/how-can-analytics-support-business-innovation

All organizations need to go down a similar path of data maturity. While you can skip steps in technology, you can’t skip steps in business data maturity. Originally published at https://www.eckerson.com/articles/evolutionary-not-revolutionary-invest-less-in-new-tech-and-more-in-your-data-values

In this episode, Wayne Eckerson and Matthew Schwartz discuss non-traditional uses of business intelligence tools. Although BI tools have been around for almost three decades, most companies just scratch the surface of what’s possible to do with those tools. Using web layers and APIs, a company can use their imagination to customize and leverage their exiting BI tool-set to monetize data, integrate tribal knowledge and build industry-specific proprietary products. Matthew Schwartz is the chief technology officer of Sage Hospitality, one of the world's largest hotel operators. Although Matt is responsible for all aspects of Sage’s IT operations, he has a deep fondness for data and analytics, having served as a BI director for several companies, including PetSmart and Staples. Matt firmly believes in the power of BI tools to transform organizations.

This audio blog probes the business value in analytics by examining the concept of Action Distance. Originally published at https://www.eckerson.com/articles/finding-value-in-analytics-action-distance

One of the hardest parts of running a data analytics program inside a large organization is governing data and reports. It’s simply too easy for the definition of core data elements and metrics to get out of sync and reports to contain conflicting information. Angie Davis has straddled both the business and IT worlds for more than 20 years. She served as a business analyst in several organizations before switching to the information technology side of the business where she ran analytics teams, first at JD Irving for six years and more recently at Brookfield Renewable where she is an IT director. Angie has a degree in mathematics and electrical engineering from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

This audio blog focuses on the importance of establishing a strong relationship between business and technical teams and describes various business engagement models that sit at the heart of all successful data analytics programs.

Learn how to achieve the DataOps objectives of improved efficiency and data quality by migrating to a streaming architecture based on Apache Kafka.