Frictionless Data Consulting Services
Solutions for Better, Faster Decisions
I’ve implemented the solutions below for my clients. To discuss how they might help your company, contact me via LinkedIn or by messaging me on Substack.
Financial Master Data (FMD)
The Unseen Connection for All Your Business Data
How do you unleash the power of your business data? You’ll find the secret in the underlying connection: Financial Master Data.
Solution
Financial master data is the unseen framework beneath all your business data. It includes five core data elements: entity, account, cost center, profit center, and project. Just like the center core of a Rubik’s Cube, you can’t see financial master data in your business activity data. It’s hidden beneath the surface. Financial master data exists only to connect the parts. Some parts of your business are closer to the core than others, like the center, edge, and corner pieces of the cube.
Benefits
Good financial master data management makes it easy to change the shape of your analytic data. It gives you built-in flexibility. Not all of your business data is directly connected to other parts, but it all connects to financial master data. You can only see the connection between research and development data and sales data, for example, from certain angles.
Value
This connection isn’t a secret at all. In fact, it’s the ancient idea behind all business analytics. Still, for most of us trying to help our companies make better, faster decisions, this might sound like an entirely new way of thinking about data. Maybe that’s how it sounds to you.
Further reading: The Hidden Data Framework Behind Business Decisions
Exception Reports (DQM)
The Power of a Simple Solution
People need a plan to improve data quality that makes a real difference. An Exception Report takes a business rule, applies it to all the data, notifies the data owner of the errors, and tracks their progress in fixing the data.
Solution
Business process:
State a rule in plain language, usually in one short sentence.
Identify the rule owner.
Translate the rule into a database query.
System features:
Emailing the rule owner a list of records that violate the rule every day. When the number of bad records hits zero, the owner no longer receives emails.
Exception Reporting tracks errors over time (as shown below) and gives executives a view of people’s progress.
Once they eliminate all the bad data, their exception report becomes an alert system, helping them recognize and fix new errors before they interrupt other business processes or misrepresent reporting data.
Benefits
Self-healing data. By combining a proven business process with our data quality solution, corrections naturally occur and are integrated into business and analytical processes without management intervention.
Improved agility. Most data changes—even updates to whole data sets—don’t wait for IT to make software changes.
People get credit for their work.
Value
Most consultants want you to spend money to solve data problems, pitching massive “transformation” projects that replace entire software systems. Those solutions fail to enforce business rules and don’t hold people accountable for fixing the data.
With Exception Reports, many companies can reduce scope or even eliminate the need for multi-million dollar projects. Instead of installing a new system and then moving on to the next project, Exception Reporting gives you a permanent, inexpensive, process-oriented solution for data quality.
Further reading: Exception Reports: The Power of a Simple Solution
Candidate Matching Services
Frictionless Data readers share a common vision: connecting data with decisions. I also connect with my readers regularly and learn about their talents, experiences, and staffing needs. This relationship helps me connect hiring managers and candidates.
Finding the right data leader makes all the difference for your decisions, and I’m happy to help my readers find the perfect fit. If you need help reviewing your needs or sourcing candidates, connect with me directly.
Data Warehouse Management Services
You’ve heard the promises of data: if you unlock the hidden insights, you can win an unfair game. Are you realizing this value?
For 25 years, I designed and managed corporate data warehouse solutions for some of the world's largest semiconductor companies. One senior executive I worked with told me, “I used to view data only as an input to my department’s decisions, something to download to a spreadsheet. But now I’m convinced that data is a strategic asset for decisions throughout the company, not just a raw input for us.”
Technology alone won’t make the connection for you. To connect data with decisions, you need a management strategy that unifies data, making it flow through your company, to everyone at the same time, and improving business decisions through alignment, visibility, trust and scale. I call my approach Frictionless Data. It’s a framework, a strategy, and an end state.
The Solution
My frictionless data warehouse solution features seven services:
Data Dictionary. This “system of record” capability helps everyone at a company by eliminating the need to resolve differences on their own.
Cataloging. You can’t secure what you can’t classify.
Subscriptions. Every system in the company receives updates from the data warehouse in real time, synchronizing master data across the company.
Exception Reporting. This service improves overall data quality across the entire company.
Flow Control. This helps standardize which solution to use across different integration scenarios.
Retention. Data represents a company’s memories, and your data warehouse adds value by keeping those memories safe.
Migration. This service helps a company upgrade or replace its business systems by providing an easy validation capability and insulating reporting solutions from business system changes.
Benefits
Just as a physical warehouse makes my life more productive, a data warehouse changes how everyone in a company works with data. It keeps data fresh, makes it easy and fast to find, and makes it readily available for many different uses. It’s an upfront investment that accelerates everyone else’s work.
Further reading:
TruGlobal Services
I’ve partnered with TruGlobal Inc. to provide comprehensive development, administration, and support capabilities for my clients. Together, we’ve developed expertise and accelerators for each of these solutions.