Making beautiful music across your organization

The ever-growing interest in data accumulation from multiple sources and organizations for reporting and analysis exposes a dirty secret: those business terms that we all think we understand actually have a wide variety of definitions. Sometimes these variances are largely irrelevant, and do not significantly impact the ability to create a reasonable report. However, there are some instances in which even minor variations in structure, content, or semantics can have a significant impact in delivering trustworthy results.

This leads to the question: if we have two different structures or definitions for what appear to be two similar concepts, should we harmonize the definitions and structures into one? In some cases this will be a good idea, and it will lead to increased consistency, but this is only true as long as the two concepts really refer to the same real-world idea. In other cases, the same terms are used for two different ideas, necessitating a division into two or more qualified business terms and definitions.

In this on-demand webinar, David Loshin explores:
  • When it makes sense to harmonize and when it makes sense to differentiate
  • What rules of thumb can be used to make that determination
  • How tools can lend a degree of control over the harmonization process

About the presenter:

David Loshin, president of Knowledge Integrity, Inc, (www.knowledge-integrity.com), is a recognized thought leader and expert consultant in the areas of analytics, big data, data governance, data quality, master data management, and business intelligence. Along with consulting on numerous data management projects over the past 15 years, David is also a prolific author regarding business intelligence best practices, with numerous books and papers on data management, including the second edition of “Business Intelligence – The Savvy Manager’s Guide”.