Faster data
by Tonny Wong
On September 15 2008, workers in financial services all over the world stared at their screens as they witnessed the largest financial meltdown since the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks in 2001. In boardrooms executives tried to quantify the impact the collapse would have on their companies. They asked their data analyst teams to produce reports that provided transparency into the underlying holdings of their portfolios to help them assess the potential exposure. Company after company found that this consolidated data was not readily available. The urgency of the requests intensified within weeks when the Dow experienced the largest losses since the great depression. For financial services companies this kind of data asset has never been more important, as market risks and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act are both compelling companies to rethink their master data management (MDM) plans. MDM is commonly defined as the discipline of providing processes, business rules and supporting technology to collect, consolidate, match, assure quality and distribute what’s referred to as a single version of the truth throughout the enterprise to ensure consistency and control over data assets. It has been nearly a decade since the introduction in the US of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002, requiring public company boards, management and public accounting firms to implement an internal framework to demonstrate control over their financial reporting. At the time, data evangelists believed this was the motivation companies needed to prioritise their data management programs. However, many companies complied with the regulatory guidelines by introducing new accounting processes, without addressing data problems. This time, that may not be an option. "The key differentiator is that the regulatory reform bill will look at the data within a company and across companies, and this cannot be done with process alone," says Michael Atkin, managing director of the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council, a non-profit trade association...
