Gartner is accepting nominations for its inaugural Master Data Management (MDM) Excellence Award. Nominations will be accepted via an online entry form from any end-user organization that has implemented a successful MDM strategy with resulting business impact. Nominations must be submitted by September 5, 2008.

Three finalists will be chosen by October 1, 2008. Each finalist will be asked to present their MDM use case to conference attendees at the Gartner Master Data Management Summit, scheduled for November 17-19 in Chicago. The attendees’ feedback as to which of the finalists they feel is the best example of MDM excellence will determine the winner. The winner will be announced during the conference.

Enterprises are invited to enter and work within a case study framework to describe their MDM initiatives and why it demonstrates business excellence. A team of Gartner analysts will evaluate and select three finalists based on the Seven Building Blocks of MDM, a strategic framework developed by Gartner to help companies maximize the probability of success. The Seven Building Blocks of MDM include:

• Vision: A business vision with an underlying MDM vision as a key enabler.
• Strategy: The MDM strategy focuses on how the MDM vision will be realized and is the plan for how to manage master data assets within the organization. This revolves around the life cycle and the architecture for master data.
• Governance: Without effective governance, an MDM initiative will probably fail, so it is vital that the MDM governance framework is created at an early stage, and MDM governance should be seen as part of a wider need for governance of all information assets.
• Organization: Involving the changing of culture, structures and behaviors to ensure that staff, partners and suppliers work together to deliver what is promised.
• Processes: Well-understood and agreed on processes for authoring, validating, enriching, publishing and consuming the master data.
• Technology Infrastructure: Involving data modeling, information quality management, loading, integration and synchronization, business services and workflow, performance, scalability and availability, manageability and security and technology and architecture.
• Metrics & Performance: Involving internal and external measures of MDM success and failure.

“MDM programs need to be business driven and holistic in nature. Technology is just one part of the puzzle. Even more crucial to achieving success will be putting in place the right vision, strategy, governance, organizational change and metrics,” said John Radcliffe, Gartner research vice president and co-chair of the Summit. “The MDM Excellence Award honors the company that has shown leadership in ensuring that their MDM initiatives are approached with consistency, simplification, uniformity of process, analysis and communication across the enterprise in order to maximize benefits to the enterprise and its customers.”

“Sharing experiences with peers, especially with new initiatives like MDM, are key to helping the broader community gain advantage with their own MDM efforts,” said Andrew White, Gartner research vice president and co-chair of the Summit.

More information on Gartner's MDM Excellence Award and the online entry form are available at the link below.

» Story on Analyst Firm Website

» Comments   Digg this    del.icio.us