presents…
Focus on Data Governance
September 17th, 2008
The Premiere Organization for Data
Professionals Worldwide
Event Location –
Great American Town Hall
580 Walnut Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202
14th Floor East.Town Hall
NOTE:
After exiting the elevator on the 14th floor, the Town Hall is
directly to your left.
7:30AM – 12:30PM
Agenda
7:30am
Registration / Continental Breakfast
8:00am
Chapter Business – Sam Hughes, President SW
Ohio Chapter of DAMA
8:30am
Implementing Master Data Management and Data
Governance at GAFRI – successes and what we
learned – Wendy Wilson, Jeff Perkins and Dean
Robinson, GAFRI
10:00am
BREAK
10:15am
Stewardship – the Job of Everyone
A Data Governance case study from a quasigovernment organization in the United Kingdom –
Genia Neushloss, Gavroshe USA, Inc.
Focus on Data Governance
Data Stewardship should be everybody’s job – on both the IT and
business sides of the organization. A pre-requisite is a business
culture that prevents individual groups from perpetuating diverse,
inconsistent, non-interoperable data definitions and business
rules. What is needed is a Data Governance environment in
which the users, analysts, DBAs, and other personnel collectively
monitor and maintain the quality, consistency, standardization,
and relevance of operational and informational data. At the heart
of that governance environment should be a corporate framework
of policies, leading practices, and workflow tools for managing
data across its life cycle.
Workflow is central to data stewardship. For each important
corporate data resource, the organization needs to provide
workflow environments within which all stakeholders—including
end users, data owners, data stewards, DBAs, and developers—
can work through the myriad issues concerning how information
is modelled, classified, collected, profiled, cleansed, transformed,
consolidated, and reported. Using administrative workflows,
discussion forums, e-mail, and other collaboration tools, IT and
business personnel should be able to propose, discuss, define,
and monitor the full set of stewardship policies implemented
within their environment.
11:15am
BREAK
11:30am
Maturing your Data Governance: Business
Metadata Life Cycle Management – lessons
learned over our 5 year journey –
Tom Hammergren, Balanced Insight
12:30pm
Event ends
Registration and attendance at this event provides you
the opportunity to learn from successful
implementations of Data Governance, as well as the
opportunity to network with fellow Data Management
professionals.
Implementing Master Data Management and Data
Governance at GAFRI –
successes and what we learned
Wendy Wilson, Jeff Perkins and Dean Robinson
COMPANY BACKGROUND:
Great American Financial Resources®, Inc. (GAFRI), is a group of companies providing consumers a broad range of financial
products and services, including fixed and variable annuities, and long-term care, life, and supplemental insurance. GAFRI is a
wholly-owned subsidiary of American Financial Group, Inc. (AFG), a larger family of companies with more than 130 years of
experience. (Great American Insurance Company dates back to 1872.) AFG subsidiaries also market property and casualty
insurance. Growing out of a philosophy of empowerment and respect for all its employees and customers, GAFRI supports people
from all walks of life and all life stages (from young educational professionals, just starting out, through recent retirees).
AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS MASTER DATA
The senior executives at GAFRI, considering the corporation's plans for growth, and after much introspection and consultation,
realized that they needed to upgrade and re-launch their BI/DW initiative. This new BI initiative was called SEEK, an acronym for
“Seeking Excellence through Enterprise Knowledge”. The initiative would address many different facets of business and IT roles,
processes and tools. One critical component would be to address the corporation's master data. GAFRI had limited Master Data
Management (MDM) in place; a small amount of master data was controlled manually, but most master data was fragmented and
redundant. A key driver for tackling MDM was the fact that the corporation's Agent and Agency records had become exceptionally
difficult to use. As it turned out, many more opportunities were uncovered and MDM has been used for far more than simply the
Agent subject area.
"Master Data Management" is a set of disciplines, applications and technologies for harmonizing and managing the system of
record for the data and metadata associated with the key business entities of an organization. However, early adopters of MDM
have realized that MDM isn't just a technology effort. Although MDM technologies can have a dramatic effect on a company's
performance, no software is going to magically solve your enterprise's data problems overnight.
GAFRI understood that improving their data, and building the foundation for MDM, would require them to address internal
disagreements and suboptimal processes. They knew that different parts of the organization would have to agree on exactly what
constitutes, for example, an "Agent" or a "Product," and how to resolve any disagreements across business functions. They
would also need to agree on hierarchies of Agents, Products, and so forth, and how to resolve duplicate records across sources.
Rather than a technology-focused effort, the emphasis became one of cross functional strategy and consensus building and a fulltime Data Governance Group was established composed of key members from the business community.
GAFRI discovered that the best way to gain control of their data was to work directly with IT and business people who understand
where data is held, and where problems exist. A multi-disciplinary task force, made up of Data Stewards (business community)
and BI/DW Architects (IT community), guides their implementation and operation of MDM today. This gives everyone a sense of
ownership and responsibility while also creating an approach focused on best practices across the business.
In addition, GAFRI realized that there were some opportunities for data quality improvement.
Using DQ profiling tools to support their analysis, they found they could define the parameters of master data and institute control
policies to regulate who is allowed to input and change master data within the BI infrastructure. They also put in the time to build
Conceptual and Logical Data Models, thus making sure they knew what to look for when reviewing their data, as well as enabling
the determination of the standards for inputting data moving forward. Only after they had these critical definitions could they fully
utilize MDM technologies.
The GAFRI team (including business and IT representatives) will cover the following major topics:
GAFRI - overview and business drivers
Business needs for MDM
Scope of MDM - evolutionary approach
IT environment
IT support solution (tools, team)
Business Data Governance team and process
Examples of hierarchies and reference data - before and after MDM
Benefits envisaged versus realised
Future plans for MDM at GAFRI
Q+A
GAFRI SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Wendy Wilson is the Director of the SEEK Data Governance team for
GAFRI. Having worked for GAFRI for 11 years, Wendy has held several
roles. These roles include Corporate financial planning and acquisitions, VP
and Controller of the Cincinnati insurance companies, and various special
projects, including leading the business through a general ledger conversion
and evaluation of its business intelligence needs. Prior to joining GAFRI,
Wendy was an Audit Senior Manager at Ernst & Young. Her primary clients
were GAFRI and its parent company, American Financial Group.
Jeff Perkins began his I/T career in 1976 working as a systems analyst and I/T
planner for Armco Steel. He joined Leshner Corporation, a textile
manufacturer, in 1985 as their Manager of Data Processing eventually being
named CIO. In the fall of 1998, Jeff joined Wallace College Books as CIO.
While at Wallaces, Jeff was the technical executive sponsor in the creation of
ecampus.com, an online college book resource. In 2001, Jeff began his own
consulting practice and was engaged by GAFRI to assist in several initiatives,
including the strategic plan leading to GAFRI’s Business Intelligence program.
Last fall, Jeff accepted a fulltime position as Director of Business Intelligence
for GAFRI.
Dean Robinson is the Iteration Release Manager for the SEEK Team at
GAFRI. Mr. Robinson joined the SEEK Team in 2006 as the Leader of the
development team for Source ETL, Data Cleansing and Kalido. He brings with
him over 14 years of in-depth Data Warehouse and BI experience. Prior to
joining GAFRI, Mr. Robinson worked at Kalido inc, leading Proof of Value
engagements for large companies such as BP Pipelines, Abbott Labs, Fannie
Mae, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Wachovia, and GAFRI. During the past 14 years
Mr. Robinson has developed BI solutions for companies such as MOEN, MTD
Products, Cole National Corporation, Owens Corning, and American
Greetings.
Stewardship – the Job of Everyone
A Data Governance case study from a quasi-government
organization in the United Kingdom
Genia Neushloss, Gavroshe USA, Inc.
THE CASE STUDY
A quasi-government organization whose purpose is to
equip the UK’s current and future workforce with the
skills to compete in the world market.
PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Background
The Approach
Assessment and Findings
Proposed Architecture
Architecture Implementation
Principles, Standards and Procedures
Data Principles
Metadata Principles
Naming Standards
Modeling Standards
Strategies and Process
Governance
Data Quality
Metadata
Delivery Tools
Roles and Responsibilities
Data Stewardship
Data Quality
Data Architecture
Metadata Management
Summary
Inmon Consulting – Collaborative Partner
Certified DW 2.0 Architects
BIOGRAPHY
The Co-Founder and a Principal Consultant of
Gavroshe USA, Inc. She has strong managerial and
technical background spanning over 30 years of
professional experience in insurance, finance,
manufacturing, mining and telecommunications
industries.
Genia has developed and conducted training courses
in JAD/JRP Facilitation and Systems Reengineering.
She is co-developer of a method-set for Systems
Reengineering. She has 16 years specialization in
planning, analyzing, designing and building Data
Warehouses.
Genia is a member of DAMA. She has presented
before audiences In Europe, USA and Africa.
Maturing your Data Governance: Business Metadata Life
Cycle Management
Lessons learned over our 5 year journey
Tom Hammergren – Balanced Insight
PRESENTATION OVERVIEW:
In our 5 years, Balanced Insight has assisted over 20
companies in improving and maturing their
capabilities in the area of Enterprise Data
Management, Business Intelligence, and Business
Metadata through the creation of Competency
Centers or Centers of Excellence. Through this
journey we have seen successes and challenges
emerge as our customers attempt to improve their
capabilities to build, deliver, and manage information
assets. This presentation will:
Define the missing link: Business Metadata
Describe a reference model for understanding opportunities
Review Lessons from our journey
The objective of this presentation is to enable those
attending to better navigate the challenges which will
arise as they embark upon such a journey.
TOM HAMMERGREN BIOGRAPHY:
Tom Hammergren is known worldwide as an innovator,
writer, educator, speaker and consultant in the field of
information management. Tom's software career
spans 19 years and includes key roles in successful
business intelligence and information management
solution companies such as Cognos, Cincom and
Sybase. While working for Sybase, Hammergren
helped design and develop WarehouseStudio a
comprehensive set of tools for delivering enterprise
data warehousing solutions. At Cincom, Tom helped
in delivering the SupraServer product line to market,
one of the first fully distributed data management
solutions for highly survivable network
implementations. During an earlier position at
Cognos, he was one of the founding members of the
PowerPlay and Impromptu product teams.
Tom has published numerous articles in industry journals
and is the author of two widely read books, Data
Warehousing: Building the Corporate Knowledge
Base and Data Warehousing on the Internet:
Accessing the Corporate Knowledge Base.
ABOUT BALANCED
INSIGHT
Balanced Insight® was organized
in 2003 to respond to the
increasing demand for
information management
solutions and services. Balanced
Insight's mission is to enable our
customers to better manage their
growing information portfolio –
maximizing value by improving
enterprise use and understanding
of key information assets. At
Balanced Insight, we are focused
on helping our customers drive
better results by better managing
a valuable, yet untapped and
growing asset – information.
Balanced Insight Consensus® is
Balanced Insight's flagship
product which has been delivered
to the market to assist in
automating this mission.