Data Hurdles

Mastering the Art of Data Management: An In-Depth Conversation with Matthew Cox
Master data management (MDM) is a vital component of any company’s operations. It serves as a bridge to unlock meaningful insights, driving smarter decisions and improving business performance. Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to the Data Hurdles episode hosted by Chris Detzel and Michael Burke. They were joined by a special guest, Matthew Cox, a veteran in the realm of data management, sharing his insights on the challenges and best practices of implementing MDM in large organizations.

From Software Engineering to Master Data Management
Matthew Cox began his career in the field of software engineering and consulting. His early focus was more on tools and platforms rather than data. It wasn't until he found himself in larger corporations that he realized the crucial role data management played in operations and decision-making.

His journey with MDM began during his time in sales operations and compensation management, where he was faced with the task of consolidating data for practical use. This experience led to the development of a custom platform for Customer Data Integration (CDI), marking his initial encounter with the complex world of MDM.

The Challenges of Implementing MDM
Cox noted that one of the primary challenges in implementing MDM within an organization is the difficulty in justifying its necessity unless it's associated with a specific business need. Key hurdles in setting up MDM include procuring funding, generating enthusiasm around the program, selecting and deploying the appropriate MDM platform, gaining domain expertise, and establishing a data quality reference point.

To address these, Cox recommends starting with a business use case that positions MDM as a solution to a problem. He mentioned that compliance has become a significant driver for MDM adoption, as many regulations now require organizations to have a clear understanding of their data. Selecting the right platform should be based on the specific needs of the organization, not solely on industry rankings. He also stressed the importance of engaging a third-party data provider to ensure data quality and alignment with industry standards.

The Role of Trust and Value in Data Management
According to Cox, the pillars of any successful MDM program are trust and value. Without these elements, the likelihood of failure is high. He believes in the value-driven approach, one that fully acknowledges the value of good data and the cost of bad data. This principle also aids in prioritizing tasks, defining the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and providing clarity and transparency to business stakeholders.

When discussing the implementation of MDM, Cox warned against attempting a large-scale data overhaul spanning 18 to 24 months. Instead, he recommended aiming for incremental improvements, starting with a few domains and gradually expanding. He likened the process of digital transformation to adjusting a space mission's destination—adapting and delivering incremental value while maintaining a core understanding of the product they're delivering.

Catalysts for MDM Adoption in Large Organizations
In terms of MDM adoption catalysts, Cox noted a shift from problem-solving to innovation, emphasizing the role MDM plays in areas like risk and compliance. Here, understanding the data and relationships with customers is central to innovation.

Both Cox and Burke agreed on the evolution of data language and understanding in executive conversations. They highlighted that compliance has facilitated a better understanding of data, leading to data governance playing a more significant role in data usage.

Future Trends in MDM - The Future of Master Data Management: An Evolution Towards Complex Interactions and Entity Resolution

In the rapidly evolving world of data management, the concept of Master Data Management (MDM) is undergoing significant transformation. In a recent discussion with Matthew Cox, a thought leader in the space, we delved into the future of MDM, exploring the implications of expanded data interactivity, entity resolution, and increasing compliance requirements.

Cox anticipates that the future of MDM is not just about companies, but rather about the complex interactions between companies, products, content, and other entities. He stresses the importance of understanding these intricate relationships and how domains of data interact. This shift, he asserts, will likely explode the number of entities we govern, moving from managing a few to potentially hundreds.

This expansion, however, isn't merely about quantity. It's also about depth of understanding. From a compliance standpoint, it's no longer enough to merely understand the individual with whom you're interacting. We must also understand who they work for, their relationships within the business ecosystem, and even the ultimate business owner of the company they represent. This chain of entities has profound implications on business decisions, making them vastly more complex.

Furthermore, the approach to MDM needs to evolve to accommodate this shift. Traditionally, MDM was about pulling only the necessary information to create a master record, but Cox believes that more transactional data will increasingly be moved into MDM. This transition will give businesses the ability to better understand the relationships between the entities they work with, and who they are sold to, billed to, and their various channels of operation. This, he says, will break open a world of more transactional data and cross-entity resolution.

An area of untapped potential is unstructured data. With natural language processing (NLP), we can extract entities from unstructured data, reducing the reliance on individuals entering data around records. This change will present a major step forward in MDM, helping businesses understand complex ownership structures and relationships across multiple companies.

Cox also emphasizes the need to simplify the process of delivering new entities. He urges that the ability to absorb and enable a new entity should be quick, painless, and templatized, given the growth of entities under management. If MDM becomes a barrier to processing data, it will fail to keep pace with future needs.

In conclusion, the future of MDM will demand more intricate understanding of relationships, increased management of entities, and greater agility in onboarding new entities. By embracing these challenges, businesses can drive strategic decision-making and ensure that MDM continues to be a vital tool in navigating the complexities of the modern business landscape.
The Final Word
Master Data Management isn't merely a technical process; it's an art that requires the integration of technical expertise, business acumen, and strategic foresight. Matthew Cox's journey and insights into the world of MDM provide invaluable guidance to organizations attempting to harness their data's true potential. Whether it's understanding compliance requirements, generating data trust, or leveraging data for business innovation, the need for effective MDM has never been more critical.

Transcript:

Chris Detzel: All right, welcome to another data hurdles. I'm Chris Detzel and

Michael Burke: I'm Michael Burke. Thanks for joining in.

Chris Detzel: And guess what? Michael, we have a special guest Matthew Cox
Matthew Cox: Hey Chris. Hey, Mike. How are you doing?

Michael Burke: Welcome, Matthew.

Chris Detzel: however,

Michael Burke: How's your how's your week going?

Matthew Cox: Weeks going, fabulous. Looking forward Memorial Day weekend, you'll obviously being a veteran it kind of has a special meeting to me but looking forward to hot dogs and hamburgers as well.

Michael Burke: Oh, that's great.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, me too.

Michael Burke: That's a really great to hear. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, and so, Matthew Cox has Hans of experience in the realm of all things data management. I'm gonna let Matthew talk a little bit about himself and and before we start going into our topic, but our topic today will be the challenges of implementing master data management and how to overcome some of those challenges. But Matthew, I'm gonna give it over to you for a minute.

Matthew Cox: Sure. So let me talk a little bit about, you know, how I've come into this role or this knowledge or domain, right of data management. And it's interesting because, you know, I start my career and I've been in this high tech field for over 20 years. But I started really focusing very specifically on engineering software, engineering and consulting, and it was really about platforms, and it was really about tools. And so data was about, Yeah. What am I entering into some fields? Because I got to have someone interest something into a field, so I can do some transaction with it. So it was really all about the platform and tooling and algorithms that capabilities and not about data. When I left consulting and ended up going to large corporations, I've worked for a number of large high-tech companies. It was intriguing to me. How data became such a big topic. We want to start talking about day and I said Well isn't it just about the platforms that we just want to run a finance transaction? Who cares about the data?

Matthew Cox: And what I found over time is this data, topic had coming up. It was interesting for me as an exp from an experiential standpoint. Is, I really didn't think about the value of data as a, as a technical resource, or, as a technician, it really didn't hit me until I moved kind of out of the tech realm that went into more of a sales and operations, our sales and marketing operations role. And my first time to really, you kind of conceive. This idea of something similar to MDM was dealing truly, with, actually a challenge that we're having sales operations side on compensation. And try and understand How do I compensate field, sales reps, when I can't even there's multiple duplications of these locations and companies and how do I even know how I'm assigning, the sales rep to an account and and all these business challenges kept coming my way and I said, You know what, we really have gotta find a way to consolidate this date and we, that was my first real run into MDM is really a former version of Indian called CD. I was customer data integration.

Matthew Cox: Really about the purpose of just how do we organize data for a purpose, right? That we're trying to fulfill this case was sales operations, and compensation management. And so I we built literally from scratch a custom platform to do CDI.

Matthew Cox: When I left that organization and went to a new one, I moved out of a sales operations mode into a marketing operations. Again, not it. Not tech that very functional in this role and guess what? Same challenge it. Now, I'm in a marketing field and marketing role. And we're trying to figure out who are all these companies and you're trying to market to. And how do I do account based marketing? And how do I figure out? It's just, it's like, Are you ready to pull your hair out? And that was my first real time to say, Listen I, I kind of experience this before. Let's look at actually doing and building a platform at that time, we matured the point where MDM was now, a real term. So mastering management actually was conceived in the industry. And I started moving and and directing and MDM practice, you know, from a functional view from a functional lens and through a few more cycles of this, they end up asking me. Well, can you right? Would you like to actually come to it and leave this whole initiative force? And that's when I really got into the depth of really, enterprise data management, but I think what's been different for me?

Matthew Cox: In my journey is that I never approached MDM from a technical perspective. I didn't come to it from a data perspective. I didn't come to it from a, from an application or an architecture perspective. I came to it from a I have a specific business need that I need solved. How can I solve it? And in the end it became MDM. That was the way in the means by which I could deliver that. And so that's how I kind of came into this role and as you get to look at MDM Mdm's, the start to when you really begin to expand out now, things like data governance, things like Enterprise data management, compliance, now, all these things start to build on it. So my experience kind of started with platforms ran into functions. Came up with this idea and recognition. I have to solve something the MDM and it's sprouted. Really for me enterprise data management. And how do we look at that across an Enterprise corporation?
00:05:00

Michael Burke: Matthew. I think that is so interesting especially how you evolved into the MDM space from a value-driven perspective and…
Matthew Cox: Yeah.

Michael Burke: I think this is kind of leading into our next question, but can you explain a little bit of the common challenges that organizations face when implementing MDM?
Matthew Cox: Sure. So the one of the things that so mdm's kind of an interesting challenge in that MDM by itself is really hard to justify within a corporation. So a lot of throughout my Through my career. Well, the great challenges that I talked to other both vendors, and other organizations was, How do I sell MDM in to a company? How do I demonstrate the need of the value, or why this should be invested? I think, you know, number one, you know, How do you, How do you fund or get get energy around? An MDM program, is one, How do you select and deploy a a MDM platform, right? A third party platform. You know, there's a, there's a number of different platforms out there number different vendors. How do you even go about selecting you have such a capability? You know, I think number three, a challenge.
Matthew Cox: Is the domain expertise? It's you know, MDM is a very specific has a very specific set of knowledge and…

Michael Burke: Totally.

Matthew Cox: information and practices and principles tied to it. That that it's hard to be successful in an MDM effort unless you understand that domain that's totality. And I think the other The last part I would say in general is, is How do you when you think about going through an MDM process, What is your your point of reference from a data quality standpoint? And how do you, How do you know with what you're building is consistent? It's quality, it's been vetted or validated, You know, those are four areas. I I can think I saw my head that really kind of get into some of the challenges, only kind of walk to the first one, a little bit, the justification. It's very hard to justify just from an architecture or a technology standpoint. I, I have said all along that. I'm, I appreciate how I entered into this industry because I came to it from a functional challenge perspective. So I've always guided whether it's
Matthew Cox: Roller up As I've consulted with other groups that to come in with a business use case come in with a business challenge, that really presses MDM as a solution that's necessary to solve that challenge. And today, you know, I think what's interesting as well for me, is that the I kept hearing, MDM is gonna slow down mdms. And so, I think mdm's really, it's really, it's key right now continues to grow because compliance is a great use case provides a wonderful use case.

Michael Burke: Absolutely.

Matthew Cox: Now, now there's mandates right before it was, Hey, I just really would like to have great marketing, but now it's hey, from a compliance standpoint, you'd better understand who that individual is. You better understand who that company is because if you don't, you're gonna, you could be in a compliance challenge, right? And there's regulations, and find some things that come with it. So I think it's easier today than ever to find those use cases. But you have to have a use case, you know, from it, a selection standpoint from a domain standpoint, you know, I think any organization that's entering into this needs to find a good system and a greater. They need to find an organization that can really help them walk through.

Matthew Cox: The process of, you know, delivering on the value of the domain, which is very important. But then also selecting a platform that meets the specific needs of organization, There is no one-size-fits. All you know, I know you where there's there's Gartner and there's Forster and there's all these rankings, the reality it's the end of the day you really have to profile your organization. What what do you need as a company?

Michael Burke: You can.

Matthew Cox: The size of company you have the number of sources. You have what you're trying to pull out of this platform, You really have to be customized your selection of a vendor based on how your profile not by how the industry ranks particular organizations. Because they're ranking may not of their configuration may not match what you're trying to seek out specifically for your company. and I think the final one is,

Matthew Cox: you know, and it's really hard to take to simply take one P data, establish, an MDM platform, and then give yourself a great a that you've you've curated and validated. Everything's perfect. I have in every instance that I have delivered MDM, which I've delivered it across five different organizations. Now,

Matthew Cox: I have leveraged a third party data provider, right? There's many on the industry Dunbridge Street Moody's, like Susque Texas, that I've always leveraged a validated, third party authority to help me gauge How good is my data, How, well am I validating it? Might bring you the right thing available match correctly. What ways of what I'm trying to demonstrate the state? Is it a line with some of these industry partners? And that gives me confidence to go back to my stakeholders and say, Listen, I've I've demonstrated my use case, I've selected a platform. I've leverage the domain skill necessary to configure MDM in a way that's gonna see our business need. And I now can verify and validate what we've done against an industry standard. I can now go back to my stakeholders with confidence.
00:10:00

Michael Burke: I love it.

Chris Detzel: That's crazy. I think we're getting a bunch of really great quotes. So keep going Michael.

Michael Burke: no, I was just gonna say look, you know, working with a lot of data stores and IT business leaders on implementation of MDM

Michael Burke: One of the things I find truly amazing and I think this is unique to you, Matthew's that you really start with the value driven approach, right? You have the value defined, you have the risks to find and the reasoning behind, why you're moving into deploying an MDM for a specific use case. So often I work with you didn't CDOs and…

Matthew Cox: Right.

Michael Burke: people very high up who they're doing this transformation but they don't have the cost of bad data and the value of good data fully mapped out in their storyline and what happens is they get lost in this ambiguity? This space where they don't know if they should be prioritizing customer or organization? What the cost of having bad data in there is going to do to their organization. And even sometimes, how is that information being consumed downstream? I think there are so many common challenges like that. Where if you have that end-to-end story that you're saying, you've mapped out several times. Predefined it helps with prioritization, it helps with defining the MVP and driving that clarity and transpar. To your business. Stakeholders that Hey, this is why we're doing it and this is what we're going to get out of it. More importantly in which how we're going to expand in the future to create, even more value for the business.

Matthew Cox: But which is which they're the seed of irony in that a bit because at the at the core of MDM I have always sold it on and…

Michael Burke: Yeah.

Matthew Cox: presented it in two terms and that's trust and value.

Matthew Cox: And if you don't think through the process of good data versus bad data, if you don't think through the fact that you've been able to measure and monitor and quantify, and validate the data that you're delivering, and that you have say data governance processes around how you manage the data deliver. You have a really hard time creating trust at the end of the day, if, if it doesn't matter how much of a transformational work out there, doesn't matter how many times, how many people I've worked on a platform. It doesn't matter how long it's taking me deliver it. If I can't deliver trust. As a first part of the conversation with the stakeholders, I've never even left first base. I've never, I never remembered. I never got the plate to hit the ball. And so,…

Michael Burke: Yeah.

Matthew Cox: I think that you have to look at this from from those two vectors. If I have to create a very trustable single source of truth.

Matthew Cox: Then I have to demonstrate what's the value of that single source of truth and it has to be intrinsic to those to those particular lines of business stakeholders or partners because if they, I can say all days like listen isn't invaluable for you to have arch, isn't a valuable for you to understand, you know company ABC is totality and they're and they look at me with with like dear the headlights. I how am I even supposed to use that? Then they really are concerning the value of…

Michael Burke: Yeah.

Matthew Cox: what I'm able to deliver. So if they don't trust what I deliver, if they don't see the value, that I've delivered then yes what my MDM program just got subtle. And I'm now on to, you know, project number two, number three. And the sad thing is I've seen a number of MDM programs. Actually, come to Crashing Hole because they were able to demonstrate both of those in cohesion to that that stakeholder to help fund the program.

Chris Detzel: You know,…

Michael Burke: So, what?

Chris Detzel: something I read quickly, Sorry, but from Gartner, two years ago is that 70% of mdm's fail of implementations? Is it? Because of the things that you just said or is it, you know, is there something different? It's just so hard to do. You know what's the Thinking around that.

Matthew Cox: So it's it's kind of a myriad of things. I think that go into that number, or at least my perspective is on it. Number one. Yes, it is. Trust and value. I think number two, I I can never overemphasize the domain skill that you need to bring to the table when you're going on a mission toward MDM. It's not, it's not as simple as saying I have some great software engineers. I have some great technicians who we're just gonna go build it or deploy it. You really have to understand almost the art of curation and how you would process that and enable it from a dump from the MDM domain environment. And I think number three is the that that perspective, that I believe really talk about this. But I'm, I'm a big fan of Incrementalism of taking one step that another step that another step, then another step and building, right? As you go through, almost like a block and number of MDM applications and…

Matthew Cox: efforts that I've seen. It's, it's like this huge waterfall effort and it's an 18 month or 24 month cycle and they're going

Matthew Cox: Won't work. They're trying to solve, you know, not just one domain, but all domain. So they want to have partner and contact and supplier and, and product.
Chris Detzel: All right.

Matthew Cox: They want to do all one, Big, Big Bang. And the reality is that in, especially when you think about digital transformation, which you alluded to earlier, Michael, you know, in 18 months years, it's changed. I mean, things are moving, things are changing. What you the mission, you start off with to Mars, right? You're not going to Mars. Now you're going to Jupiter and you were prepared for Jupiter. You're prepared to go to Mars, but there's no longer the destination. And so, so to me, you have to wrap around the fact that there has to be a core of what you're trying to. You can't ever forget trust in value. You have to have the domain experience, Understand the product that you're delivering is able to meet the concept and purpose of MDM, and you've got to deliver it in an incremental value associated way. That every you have this periodic update that delivers value delivers value, I mean it's very much like the whole concept of agent

00:15:00

Matthew Cox: Right? You're able to move and shift. So your MDM platform adjusts. So you've got to think quick hits, quick wins and not try and boil, the ocean of don't know, because it's because it kind of goes against the thought of an MDM. Oh, well, a lot of people perceive MDM. I don't have to solve every domain at once. I don't have to solve every source system at once, I can go after two, three source systems. You know, harmonize curate, their data, get them back, a source of truth and I can add a fourth, then I can add a fit, then I can edit you to me. I, The MDM is built and I think the third party products out there all capable. It's it's built to expand expand and extend based on how your business wants to operate and to think about it, as a long-term shift, you're trying to move down some coastline. And you, you're destination is far off you. You've missed the mark, you've missed your ability to adjust and move as the business moves. And those are things I've seen historically to cause and practices and programs today.

Michael Burke: It. That is such an interesting statement there, and I think that, you know, if we, if we kind of dial that back a bit, when we're talking about, why a company engages in an MDM right, and peel that back a little bit in your experience. Is that more on The need to innovate and like the desire to grow or typically, is this something where maybe something happened, you know, they've hit a problem point. What is the thing that sparks funding MDM in a larger organization and and how do you guide them through A to Z? I think you've kind of talked through that, it is a process but I guess that initial point of traction, one of the most common questions that I get when I'm running these boards is like, Well, how do we get started? How do we get business stakeholders to buy in and just see the light at the end of the tunnel?

Matthew Cox: Here. So I think from Internet, Today's World's a little bit different than, you know, 10, 15 years ago, when worrying about I think, I think if you look back historically it was about a problem that needed to be solved, right? I'd like to kind of instance that I talked about. We, if you're trying to do an example, if you're trying to use account based marketing, I need to understand the account and the contacts, and the leads the same in marketing. As I understand them in sales, I have to have a way of communicating that across and that as of between marketing and sales was so broad for so long. It was a problem that need to be solved. MDM was a great and if I'd say ABMs, probably the has been historically, the best use case to drive MDM. But it was a problem I think today.

Michael Burke: Yeah.

Matthew Cox: I think the beauty of how mdms evolved and how the industry evolved as it is now more about innovation. And if you begin to look at opportunities around kyc as an example, if you look around risk and compliance were now companies are trying to achieve or innovate to what were they? Can they can either fulfill regulations, they can get ahead of compliance or they can really get serious about understanding. The relationship with, with a customer MDM. Now becomes the innovation because at the core of all of those is still the need the very basic need. I have to identify all of these records to one. I've got to be able to duplicate all these entities into one. I've got to be able to fashion, my understand, my, the total understanding I have about an account or a person so that I can fulfill these innovative moves toward risk and ESG and to compliance. So for me it's it's been a transition. What I would look to is really kind of both an organization because I think that they're still so many challenges. If you could say like old school challenges and marketing,

Matthew Cox: Talking to sales, It still exists in many companies so you still have you know problem areas you can hit but because of the way that we're trying to go to market with KYC type tools, you can literally talk in both veins at any corporation and sell that concept of MDM to both and get the benefit of being in both places because as far as I'm concerned, MDM is innovative, you can great, create innovative solutions with it. And that's what really I've been in business to do is to drive innovation through MDM

Michael Burke: I love it. It's it's so true too, right? I mean One of the things that I see are in the market as well, is that the language of MDM and really, the language of data is evolving and it's becoming significantly more common across business stakeholders across executives. We're no longer, are they just saying, You know, show me a report but they actually are starting to understand the importance of how all of this builds on top of one, another to create value in a pipeline and really the backbone of the infrastructure on how decisions are made. Are you seeing any kind of change like that in the organizations that you've worked for or the place that you've gone? Where data is no longer, it's something subject to just the IT folks, but everybody across the organization is leveraging, the power of information.
00:20:00

Matthew Cox: You know, we you didn't get off at the theme of data driven, right? So you're kind of heading to this idea of data driven, I want to understand talk to me about the data and you know, data driven really is not a new constant, right? We've been talking about data driven, I mean the red but the original

Matthew Cox: Reporting was about, You know, executive decision making right. It's all about How do I get decisions support, right? With some of the first reasons we had reporting now, right? Just helped the decision process…
Michael Burke: Yep.

Matthew Cox: but to your point most of it was just give me the result. I just want to see the report, Just give me the numbers. Give you the numbers, give you the number. I think what's been interesting for me is because and I all I'll dial at least in my experience. It may not been errors, everybody experience, but in my experience compliance has really driven. That understanding of I got, I have to understand the day. It's not enough for me to know that we comply. It's not enough to know this risk, I have to understand the data behind it because there's so much more. The regulations are so much more myopic on How is data being treated. And What's that data, that's in place, Where is it being stored? I mean, there's your articles about Facebook, right recently, there's, you know, they had a big decision from the EU about just where data store, right? So I think that it becoming more commonplace and but the question becomes then how do you enable that, right? How do you get the data to them?
Matthew Cox: In a factor that makes makes sense. And to me, this this leans a little bit into data governance, right? Because data governance for me is not just a handful of bureaucratic policies and procedures. It's really about at the other day, to me, it's about enablement, right? How are you enabling data to be used and that enablement comes in various forms, right? How do I standardize it? How do I make it? So it's accessible. So think about a David catalog, How do I describe the information so that when an executive or you know even a person in cell support or maybe customer service and see some information you know they can understand the meaning and purpose of that attribute that data attribute. So think of data dictionaries in the past How am I? Defining that information? So it's easy to collectible metadata. So data governance in from my perspective is driving up. The not only the means by which we can better organize and profile our data think policies and procedures. That's the typical table stakes, right, for big difference, but it's really about how I put in

Matthew Cox: The methods in which I can enable its use the name, the methods in, which I can classify it. Clarify it and measure it in a way that becomes meaningful to those end consumers. So to me, the examples is taking a much bigger role beyond the old days of. Okay, what's my deletion or retention policy, very boring, everyone falls asleep. But I think today, it's about How do I harness those capabilities that that enable a new audience of MDM and data to engage. And and as part of that to have confidence because I've looked at the catalog, I read the dictionary component, I understand the day of the data, I see the lineage working from. I now have faith. That what I just saw is real and is able to fulfill the business process. I'm engaging right?

Michael Burke: Really interesting. And, you know, when we talk about this process of truly understanding, The governance of this data, right? The use cases the transparency between different stages of that information, evolving into value, What strategies can organizations think to employ to kind of drive that culture of change, right? I think that is a new way of thinking still, and it still is evolving across an organization. How do you get folks to adopt this process of understanding? The data enabling governance through this journey.

Matthew Cox: So, one of the things that I've done in the past is is because it's it's tough to force that engagement, right? So you can't go and eat it right that I want this group or that group to engage. So what I have one of my, my purpose historically has been to bring members of my stakeholders together, right? So let's say I bring sales and I bring marketing, I bring operations and finance together because there is an intense cycle that covers all of them. If you've got the life of a customer, right, the Indian life of a customer, they all have a function and a role in it. And what I found was by, bringing those groups together into a forums called a counsel, or a board or whatever type of structure you like to create.

Matthew Cox: Driving the conversation between them, enabling them to talk through. Hey, this is what I received from you from. You know, I'm in sales. This is what I see from you for marketing about how long We're operational. Standpoint. I need this already. What? I'm what I'm trying to deliver, right, that product, This is what I need in the data. You gave me from that marketing was wrong. So for me, it was, it's been trying to impress upon them opportunities for them to to collaborate. And to talk about the exchanges they're having between their business functions because that's going to becomes very real to them. If I talk about I'm doing I'm doing data transformation and ingestion and curation, they're like, This is very boring. Give me, you know, Take me to dinner something out of this. But when you talk about it from a business series of step and you're like, Listen the day, we collected the marketing. By the time, we got to delivering a product, we lost something. We're unable to actually connect the two together, that's when it becomes very real to them because their business flow, is being directed complicated or potentially enriched, by the mean.
00:25:00

Matthew Cox: Of which data is routed through their environment that means by which it's enriched through environment. And it means by which, we can declare step by step by step. How it was either improved how it was diminished, or how it met the standards that we put in place from an end-to-end cycle. So for me, it's really about getting those functions together and letting them begin to talk through how data serving them from one step to another through the end to inflow.
Michael Burke: Really nice. I love the idea of kind of counseling multiple parties to try to get them to work through you as an exchange of high quality data. That's really interesting.
Matthew Cox: Well, and it's great for me, Michael, honestly. It's you know, I've lived the world of, you know, trying to berate groups right from an IP standpoint.

Michael Burke: Um, yeah.

Matthew Cox: So I get on my it hill right on my tower and I'm shooting arrows right at everyone in the business because they're not fulfilling what I expect them to feel from it. Again, it can be from even a data governance standpoint, right? I have a data standard, right? So let's say we have a data. I go to marketing all day and say, Listen. You know, I've got to have better data create from you on YouTube verify against this and they're looking me saying the business process, You know, I can't have you stopping my engagement from a marketing standpoint. I can't have you being a delay or a barrier, my business process. So from an IT standpoint, but God is standpoint from a standard standpoint. I can't relate to them the same value, prop as the sales organization, who says, I can't even talk to that person until I understand the account that they work for, right? It's not like getting my ability.

Michael Burke: Up.

Matthew Cox: So it's much easier for me to say you guys to late converse, all consult and tell you what we can do to help you on each step.

Matthew Cox: And then I become less of the of the item and more the carrot unless of the stick from a standard standpoint and that's the role I would prefer to be in from A, from a technology standpoint.
Michael Burke: Really interesting and I really appreciate that it, you know, I think that that is the kind of guidance that everybody needs to listen to is creating that story listening, and putting the right people together to go and work out those issues and how they can be resolved. You know, looking forward to the future. How do you see the landscape of MDM evolving and how should organizations prepare for these changes?

Matthew Cox: Well to me that it's a I'm very excited about what's coming next and so let's talk first, just a minute about about the evolution of MDM, kind of where it's been where it's going.
Matthew Cox: What I have seen, you know, historical MDM, but we'll just use up some specific examples you when you manifested in MDM program and platform you typically create a domain. So let's say company. So I create a company domain. I'm now want to master that and I get that set up. Now, I go create another domain, Let's say It's contact. And I want to ask that they may have, I create another domain that is product, Right? I have a product. I mean, as Master that, you know, Historically, These have been fairly independent activities, Right? I'm I'm focusing on one, I'm trying to fix that.
Chris Detzel: Business.

Matthew Cox: I certain customers for that, I believe the next step is is going to expand to almost like a 3D view of that or We're really gonna be moving into what we call across entity resolution where I'm not some concern,…

Michael Burke: Yeah.

Matthew Cox: just about company, I'm I'm working. So, about companies interaction with product interaction with content, interaction with all these entities. So I think we're gonna over time. Raise the bar on understanding, How domains interact? How do entities of data interact? And the concept of
Matthew Cox: Of limiting, the number of entities we we govern is gonna is gonna explode. I believe, it'll go from. We have one or two three entities under management to tens of 20s, if not hundreds of entities, because it'll be very easy to pull them all together and understand their relationship. And I really feel it's gonna be a necessity ultimately, from even a compliance standpoint, because as you look to where compliance regulations are going, it's not enough to just understand the person. Yeah. That you're interacting with as an individual, you've got to understand. Okay. Well,…

Michael Burke: Now.
Matthew Cox: who's that, who's that person working for and what's your relationship with him? Okay. Well, hold on. That's not enough. Now, I need to understand the ultimate business owner of that company, that's hiring that person that's actually wanna have a community, a conversation with you. And so you can be able to see the bridging or this chaining of of entities, right? And it's not going to be as simple as it has been historically and say, Listen I'm managing companies, go have fun, go to your your CRM tool and sell all day. It's really going to be saying I need
00:30:00

Matthew Cox: Understand who I'm trying to sell to, in relationship, to compliance and risks and ownership and ESG. So, the complexity of how you interrelate. Those different entities together to drive a business decision is going to become vastly, more complex, and MDM is going to have to rise up, to be able to understand those intricate relationships. And I think as part of that,
Matthew Cox: You know, historically MDM we we would pull only the information into MDM that was necessary to create this master record and and the best practice has always been to keep it fairly. Keep it fairly small as far as the number of attributes, right? You keep it friendly lightweight. I believe we're going to be moving more and more into the more Transactional data will be moved more into MDM. Because I'm gonna want to understand that relationship of not just the entity that I'm working with, but that entity and who they are sold to and who the bill to was, and who's my first year, second year, third year, you know, channel that I'm working through. So, I, I believe the the days of restricting, the amount of data coming into MDM restricting, the number of domains that I'm managing, I think that's gonna break and bring it break, open into a world where it's gonna be a lot more transactional data and a lot more cross entity resolution. I think it's a very big step for us to move forward. I think number two, an area that I've been pushing for a lot recently is I'm structure date. So natural. Language processing. You know, the

Matthew Cox: To move from just a highly structured data that we've put into MDM to driving out and say, Listen, give me all of that, unstructured data and let me derive entities from it, so I'm less and less, I'm less and less reliant upon individuals, you're entering data around records. I mean, think about, you know, Clm right contract class cycle management, typically metadata…

Michael Burke: Yeah.

Matthew Cox: It's not really strong. Then I have every entity involved in that relationship on in a fight, right? In a degree. So I can't, I just extract it straight from there. I think NLP is going to open up into the world, and I think I talked a little bit about about Uvo. I think the the, you know, today's lens is, I've got a record, I've got some kind of hierarchy or relationship, you know. And if you think about it for me, let's just take customers an example. So company is a domain, customers a type

Matthew Cox: I'm gonna want to not only understand that that customer hierarchy right or that corporate hierarchy associated with, you know, Company ABC, but that next tier really understanding the ultimate beneficial owner. And how does that now relate across various companies? I may have one person,…

Michael Burke: Yep.

Matthew Cox: you know, Chris may have, you know, 35% ownership and 20 companies. Right? All I do before, was that there are 20 companies now that I realize Wait, Chris is now a pivot point and all those organizations? What does that mean to me? Does it mean anything to me? So I think that's a next year from an MDM standpoint. And I think finally, hey what I at least see on the horizon is to need to ease in which we in which we deliver new entities. I mean part of we talked about earlier, right? How long it takes sometimes to make MDM available how long it takes to organize a domain and put together this song, Barbershop rules and…

Chris Detzel: Okay.

Matthew Cox: to drive all these pieces and social truth. I think we, you know, third party then there's our products have to make the ability to absorb and enable a new entity. Very easy, it's got to be quick. It's got to be painless. It's got to be templatized because I'm I see the growth of entity entities under management growing exponentially. As we move forward, especially as we think about ML and AI down the road, where we want to feed them more and more data. MDM cannot be the barrier to how we're able to process data if MDM becomes the stall in the process, because the lag time to create these domains and…

Michael Burke: Yeah.

Matthew Cox: entities, it's gonna become a dinosaur right in the game of the future. And so MDM has to move and make it a much easier. Much more expeditious process to onboard on ramp, curate and deliver new entities platform. So those I think four or five things that are keen in my mind that I think are coming forward in the future.

Michael Burke: Now, to thank you so much.

Chris Detzel: That is a lot of question.

Michael Burke: Yeah, this this was great. I have I have nothing else to say that. I accept. Yes, like I completely agree. I think that You know, right now we're the the analogy of like three blind men with an elephant, right? We don't have context, we don't have holistic picture of relationships, the way that the real world does, and we're going to continue to assimilate closer to that as things evolve in the space. Thank you so much for joining us today Chris. I don't know if you have any wrap up words.

Chris Detzel: Um no freight and review us all the ratings and reviews is always good for podcasts. Certainly Matthew, thank you so much for coming on data hurdles today. I'm Chris Detzel and

Michael Burke: I'm Michael Burke. Thanks for tuning in.

Chris Detzel: all right. Thanks everyone.