What to ask your agency about master data management
We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on master data management, these questions are worth asking early.
Data outlives the applications built on top of it, which is why the model deserves more thought than the screens. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
Questions worth asking
- Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
- How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
- What happens if it needs changing in a year?
- What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?
What a good answer sounds like
Two systems with different customer records will disagree at the worst moment. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
Reconciliation is cheaper than arbitration later. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
What this looks like day to day
Most data problems are ownership problems that turned into technical ones. Three things worth confirming about master data management before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Reconciliation is cheaper than arbitration later — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.