Let me start by saying that this is not an article about big data.
While the source of big data is external to your organization, it is a
topic of its own. Many of the concepts and approaches discussed will
definitely apply to your big data initiatives, but that won’t be the
focus of this article.
External data is information that is sourced from outside of your
organization. This could be information you purchase from a marketing
or service organization, a government agency, the post office, or a
business partner. There are many potential sources of external
information.
External data can be used for various purposes in your
MDM implementation. You can use external data to:
- Enrich your MDM data with new information you are unable to collect on your own
- Validate information you have captured in your own systems
- Update information you have captured to improve the quality of the data
- Use it as reference data to provide additional information without fully integrating it into your MDM system
- Use it as a source of test data for environments where data privacy prevents usage without masking but valid data is required
There are many approaches that can be used to integrate
external data
with your
MDM implementation. Your external data can be used to update
your
MDM data as is the case with enrichment and data quality
initiatives. Your external data can be stored outside of your
MDM
implementation which is used for reference implementations and data
quality initiatives. How you decide to integrate your external data can
also have licensing implications either for your data provider or your
MDM licensing. Integration choices, depending on the source, may also
offer real time integration services versus taking the information base
in-house.
When integrating information from external sources, you may face the
issue of which source to trust over another. Typically, purchased
sources from outside provide a high quality of information, while data
provided by a business partner may have issues of its own. If you
haven’t yet addressed trusted sources for your
MDM single version of
truth,
external data sources may highlight this need.
Read more..