Hello all. I’m back from a brief blogging hiatus. I thought I would preach some today on the importance of establishing corporate data standards as it relates to Service Management and for that matter all other applications that share similar corporate data. By corporate data I am referring to things like Locations, Employees, Departments and Cost Centers. From a Service Management perspective these data elements are typically captured each and every time the service desk takes a call. In order to accurately capture this information it must be maintained in a database. Unfortunately, for most organizations this information is often maintained in many databases manually and independently with the following negative consequences:

• Manually maintaining this data is time consuming and multiplied by the number of applications where the data is maintained
• Integrating or sharing data between applications becomes very difficult and expensive if data is not synchronized because it must be translated
• Inaccurate data leads to delays in servicing the customer
• Manual verification and/or addition of data leads to delays in servicing the customer and costs additional resources

The number of organizations that don’t manage this data in a single repository amazes me. Almost every large company has some sort of ERP tool that’s purpose is to serve as the repository for this type of data throughout the organization. Standardizing and managing corporate data in a single repository and then using that repository to feed other systems that require the data can create huge cost savings.

One real world example I came across recently involves a company that uses Peoplesoft. They have deployed both the Peoplesoft HR module and the Peoplesoft Financial module. Surprisingly both of these modules manage Employee data independently and each has its own definition of employees. There is no key that can be used to relate the independent employee records. Furthermore, the data stored in Peoplesoft HR does not include the person?s phone number; the phone number is stored in the Financials module.

I was involved in managing an upgrade to this company’s service management application. One of their goals for the upgrade is to get an automated feed from Peoplesoft to maintain employee data so that the employee data does not have to be manually reviewed and often updated during the course of each call. An obvious time and cost savings. Unfortunately, since the Peoplesoft HR data does not have phone number (a critical piece of data in Service Management) this goal will be a challenge. The company plans to merge Peoplesoft data with Active Directory, which presumably will carry phone number, and then integrate AD with the Service Management application. Of course, this complicates the integration and will add to the cost of the upgrade.

My advice to any company is to launch a project to standardize and centralize the management of corporate data if you’re not already doing so. In the long run this will significantly reduce maintenance costs of every single application in your organization that leverages this data - and typically this is many applications. Furthermore, it will significantly reduce implementation costs for any future application deployments that will require this sort of data.

OK. I’ll step down off my soapbox for this week. Let me know what you think. Obviously, standardizing corporate data is easier said than done. I’d love to hear some real world examples of the challenges you’ve faced in these efforts and what you’ve done to find solutions.

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