Enterprise Data Management

Our enterprise data management practice enables our clients to unlock the tremendous value that is often hidden or inaccessible within their data. We rebuild or modify siloed systems, modernize legacy systems, and develop new solutions to automate manual processes.

Your data is a key strategic asset. Enterprise Data Management (EDM) defines how this asset is uniformly managed and made accessible and useable across the organization. Increased accuracy and rapid availability of data result in better decision making. Cost savings result from spending less time correcting errors and resolving data conflicts. Savings also come from eliminating needless duplication of data and processes.

The Need

Tremendous amounts of data are created and collected by organizations in the course of operations. This data is often stored in many silos of information ranging from databases, to spreadsheets, to data marts, to enterprise data warehouses. A central repository is often not the solution. Studies have shown that more than 50 percent of data warehouse projects have had limited acceptance or were outright failures because of data quality issues.
We Can Help

An enterprise data management project can be a long-term exercise and in many cases is never completed across the entire enterprise. Johnston McLamb's initial focus is on:

  • The highest-priority issues that will provide the largest ROI
  • Critical issues that can be resolved relatively quickly so the enterprise sees fast improvements.
Our Approach

Johnston McLamb's extensive experience with EDM includes one of the largest and most complex organizations in the U.S. We understand EDM requires alignment among multiple stakeholders who need to understand and support the objectives.

We begin our EDM process with a thorough understanding of the requirements of the end users and the organization as a whole. Managing stakeholder requirements is a critical, ongoing process. It's based in understanding the organization's workflow, data dependencies, data tranformation rules, and tolerance for operational disruption. We:

  • Identify the most critical business processes
  • Prepare an inventory of existing systems, assessing the degree to which each one is integrated or functions independently
  • Identify the data collected and how/where it's stored
  • Prepare a report of our findings, along with a Strategic Plan which includes recommendations for:
    • Data stewardship and ownership
    • Data governance
    • Data quality
    • Integration of data across the enterprise
    • Standards
    • Data transformation
    • Use of data models

Following acceptance of the Strategic Plan, we work with the enterprise as needed for implementation. We have expertise in all areas of enterprise data management. We can rebuild or modify siloed systems, modernize legacy systems, and develop new solutions to automate manual processes.