Data Vault 2.0 Helps Kick-Start MDM Efforts

Whether you have a Master Data Management System or are planning on one, DV 2.0 solutions are already ahead.

Audience(s):?

1. Data Vault 2.0 enthusiasts interested in implementing an MDM system
2. Implementers of Master Data Management (MDM) systems
3. Business sponsors of data management efforts related to MDM

What is Data Vault 2.0?

Here's yet another example of the Data Vault 2.0 System being an enabler within your organization. Data Vault 2.0 is the only prescriptive industry standard methodology for you to turn raw data into actionable business intelligence, leading to tangible business outcomes. It gives you a proactive, proven recipe to rapidly produce results for your business intelligence endeavours.

On this particular front, there’s nothing out there that comes close because while there are various architectures, modelling styles and frameworks, nothing really gives you a step-by-step paint-by-the-numbers style methodology to follow across people, process and technology that goes all the way from soup to nuts using a solution approach.

Note: Data Vault 2.0 enthusiasts already know this, so they can skip this section and move to the next section. If you haven’t heard of it, then here’s what you get:

• A flexible data model architecture capable of dealing with cross-platform data persistence, multi-latency, multi-structured data, and massively parallel platforms.?
• An agile methodology called Disciplined Agile Deliveries (DAD) within it, which is both automation and load friendly.
• Several architectures across people, process, data and technology which includes a scalable systems architecture for dealing with almost any type of data.

There’s a lot more to it, but what’s crucial to understand is that it is a paint-by-the-numbers approach to building analytics solutions and includes everything from requirements to information delivery (soup to nuts) to the business.?

They key is to understand and then adhere to the prescribed standards and recommended best practices. To ensure that business get the maximum value out of this solution, there are certifications which start with people.?

But first, lets talk about how …

You Can Kick Start Your Master Data Management implementation far quicker from a Data Vault 2.0 implementation.

Let’s take a look at what master data means first.

At the core of all business processes are the most important identifier called business keys.

Business keys are used to identify any entities that are a part of the business process. Without business keys, your process flows would pretty much become meaningless.

Now, in most organizations the same entity with applications can mean different things across different groups whether it’s a conglomerate or whether it’s departmental divisions within. These are due to different use cases and often due to different applications - many which assign their own business keys to an entity. This situation can get even more complicated by external factors like mergers and acquisitions where new data has to be integrated into the enterprise.

For the most part, you end up having several keys to the same entity within the organization.

When this happens, you can have different departments like Marketing, Sales, Contracts, Manufacturing, Procurement etc talking about the same entity using their own business keys because these mean different things to them.

However at an organizational level you need to have a mapping across these systems to understand the process at the organizational level to reliably tie the information together.

This is where a master data management (MDM) system comes in. An MDM system gives you what can be called a ‘golden key’ for each business entity. The MDM system is also responsible for maintaining the mapping across the systems. All organizational systems interface with the MDM to get the key mappings.

In the Business Intelligence world, we’ve always had the problem of mapping business keys across the enterprise. It’s one of the oldest problems. But, what if you don’t actually have an MDM system yet, or the mappings yet.?

How do you build out an Enterprise Analytics Solution Without These Key Mappings?

This is where the Data Vault 2.0 System has you covered in several ways. Let’s take a look at the different scenarios in which Data Vault 2.0 helps. Before we dive in, do keep in mind that a proper MDM system should be upstream (before) of the Data Warehouse (Enterprise Memory Archive).?

Just keep in mind, some of these concepts may require a very basic understanding of a hub and link, and perhaps to an extent satellites.?

The 30 second version is that a hub is a list of business keys of a single concept across the enterprise. The link is an intersection of the relations between two logical hubs, and the satellite is descriptive data pertaining to a hub or a link.

Scenario #1 - The organization doesn’t have an MDM solution. Key mappings are all over the place. The combination of a humble hub and a single link called a Same-As Link provides the basis of a poor man’s MDM solution. As long as a business key has the same semantic meaning and same grain (even across systems), for the most part, you can get by with a single hub and a single same-as link attached to it for each business key concept.

The nice thing with a Data Vault 2.0 solution is that you can start populating your hub, irrespective of whether you have a key mapping yet or not. Then as these mappings come in, you can leverage them to populate the same-as link. If they’re from reliable reproducible sets that can be audited, then they can go into the raw vault. On the other hand, if they’re derived through a non-auditable activity like AI/ML or if they’re “human powered”, then they go into what we call a business vault.

Scenario #2 - The organization already has an MDM solution and the Analytics solution simply has to leverage the mappings.

While this is an ideal situation for all models, architectures and frameworks, remember only Data Vault 2.0 gives you a complete system for building out your solution. Folks who only stress on the model are missing out on the true value of the Data Vault anyway as models can change and be adapted to technology.?

Sometimes core concepts can become logical depending on platform abilities. As technology evolves, the distance between the logical and physical, transactional and analytical starts reducing. Data Vault 2.0 is already ready for such changes.

As far as MDM goes, for each business key concept, the combination of a hub, same-as link and an effectivity satellite on the same-as link will let you store not just the keys of a single business key across the enterprise, but also changes if any.

So, just like Data Vault 2.0 gives you a kick-start for your MDM efforts, and MDM effort also can help kick-start your Data Vault. Either way, it’s well suited.

Scenario #3 - The organization doesn’t have an MDM, but has a Data Vault 2.0 solution running for some time. Then the organization invests in an MDM effort.

Even here, since the Data Vault 2.0 solution already has a poor man’s version of a master data solution, it makes it really easy to transition to an MDM. First, the build-out and populating of the MDM system would be really, really quick using the constructs from the Data Vault. Then the interfacing back to the DV as expressed in both the above scenarios can continue without any changes to what was built as a part of the analytics effort.

A Data Vault 2.0 Solution Done Right can help kick start any MDM implementation

As far as I know, the Data Vault 2.0 System of Business Intelligence is the only solution that has a construct to build, capture and maintain master data across the enterprise as a part of the methodology.

A Data Vault is done right when competent, certified practitioners, utilizing certified software tools, follow the Data Vault 2.0 standard and prescribed guidelines for implementation to build a solution out quickly but while reducing project risk.

Data Vault Alliance (DVA) is globally recognized by forward thinking information-driven leaders as the trusted authority of the Data Vault standards, resources, compliant implementations, and measurable, predictable and valuable business outcomes.

That standardized methodology of Data Vault 2.0 dramatically reduces risk by enabling compliant solutions and ensuring predictable ROI.

The Data Vault 2.0 methodology works across people, process and technology and DVA as an organization focuses on ensuring that Data Vaults are done right, everywhere, every time which starts with Data Vault 2.0 certified people or the CDVP2 certification offered by DVA and it’s Authorized Training Partners (ATPs) world-wide.

Since, the foundation of any successful solution is a team of trained people, it’s important to get an entire team trained and certified before building out a solution, and if required even get some guidance during the initial phase.

There are several scheduled and authorized Data Vault 2.0 bootcamps across the world and they can be found here -> https://learn.datavaultalliance.com/event-directory/