The fact that Asset is overlooked by so many Master Data Management practitioners creates significant risks for enterprises.

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How is this? The first reason for this is that, because Assets represent such a significant financial investment for an enterprise, knowing what they are, where they are and their condition is essential from both a financial and governance viewpoint.
The second is that, because many Assets play a key role in the production of products or the delivery of services, their location, specification and condition, can have a direct and significant impact on costs, profits, quality, compliance, etc.
So, forgetting about Asset in MDM is decreasing control and increasing risk.

So What Do We Need to Know?

What Is It?
There are some fundamental things that you need to know about assets if you’re going to manage them properly.
The first of these is, “What is it?” This seems basic but, in many organisations, it’s often unclear and undocumented. Assets are not properly listed and, if they are, the are listed in a separate, often primitive, Asset Register system, which is not connected in any way with production systems or operational systems.
Where Is It?
Next, once you know what the Asset is, you then need to know where it is. The Asset might be a plane, a train or a truck. You need to know precisely where it is. For this reason, asset is always inextricably linked to the other Master Entity, Location.
What Does it Do?
You then need to know what the asset is meant to do. Sometimes, the answer to this is quite obvious, for example, if it’s a truck in a quarry. But what if it’s a pump on a petrochemical plant. What does it do? What role does it play? Is it involved in part of the production of some product or is it there for safety purposes?
What Is Its Condition?
You’ll also need to know it’s condition. This is vital, because a bad condition could represent a significant risk to the enterprise. If its condition is not good then it might break down, or it could represent a safety hazard, or it could be that if it breaks down, it could bring the whole production process to a halt.
Are There any Laws Relating to the Asset?
Now, for many assets, there are laws governing their condition and operation. These might be local health and safety laws, national or even international laws. You’ll need to know what these are because violation of these laws might represent a significant risk to the enterprise, for example, place it open to a large fine or, worse, have it shut down.
But even if its condition does not expose the enterprise to legal action, it could still have a significant effect on the enterprise profitability. For example, if the condition of the asset means that the enterprise violates hygiene standards, then any product the enterprise produces using it, would not be saleable, resulting in major financial losses.
Who Owns It?
Another question you need be able to answer is, who owns it? Does the enterprise own the asset, or does it belong to somebody else? It could be an asset that you’re hiring in. If so, who’s responsible for its condition, and it’s operation. Again, it is vital to know these things.

MDM Master Class

In my upcoming Master Data Management Master Class on the 25th and 26th of this month, I’m going to cover Asset in greater detail and tell you how you can model it, so that you answer these questions, but also, and probably more important, so you know how you talk to the business about the real business benefits of including asset in your MDM activities.
Below you’ll see information on the two sessions that I’m running on 25^th 26^th of this month. I’d love to see you at either one. Simply, click on this link and book the session that suits you.

Also, if you do enrol, I am offering a special gift to the people enrol on in this Master Class, worth US$89, in the form of a discount off my four-module Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management online course, which covers the entities of Party, Product, Location and Asset in great detail. Everybody who has used these courses loves them. They are very, very powerful.

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In this post, I’m going to talk to you about the POWER of and element called Address Use from my technique of Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management.
As I said in my previous post, it’s essential that ALL of your Master Data Management projects and activities drive real, commercial business benefits to the enterprise. If they don’t, they’re just intellectual exercises.

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If you’re starting an MDM project, then you’re going to find it much easier to get buy-in from senior management if you can show real business benefits. It’ll also make you think more clearly for yourself about what these benefits are. Believe me, if you do Master Data Management properly there are always significant benefits.
Address Exists in Its Own Right
In my technique of Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management, Address is treated quite differently. In the traditional approach, Address is usually embedded in operational systems as part of ‘Customer’ or as part of ‘Supplier’ or as part of ‘Employee’, etc.
Well, Address actually exists in its own right. It is something that is made use of by a Party. The Party could be an individual or a commercial enterprise. So, you might have an individual living at an Address or a commercial enterprise operating from an Address.
Address Use for an Individual

If we look at this first slide above you’ll see that this link between Party (in this case and Individual) and Address – this is the Address Use, which shows that the individual ‘lives at’ or ‘works at’ or has ‘previously lived at’.
Address Use for an Enterprise

The same is true for enterprises. If we look at that diagram above, you’ll see that an enterprise might use an Address as a ‘Head office‘, or a ‘Despatch depot‘, a ‘Regional office‘, a ‘High street store‘, etc.
One Address Many Uses
Address Use is very powerful because a Party can make many uses of an Address and an Address can be used by many parties, as shown on the following slide.

For example, if we take the Address ’25 High Street’, it could be that it used by ABC Cleaning as their ‘Head office‘. It could also be used by Elite Printers as a ‘Despatch depot‘. The IRS might have their ‘Regional office‘ there. ABC Cleaning also makes a second use of it as their ‘High street outlet‘.  To bring real power to the business, it’s very important that each of these Address Uses recorded separately because it could be that ABC Cleaning might move their head office, away from 25 High St and that Address Use would cease, but they might still operate their high street store here.
So, Address Use is extremely powerful and I will talk much more about it in my Multi-Dimensional MDM Master Class that I’m running on 25th-26th of April 2017. In this Master Class I’m going to talk about and expand on Address itself and talk about Location, which encompasses much more than Address alone.
Location – MORE Than an Address
For example, depending on your business, there are Locations that you might need to know about, and which don’t have a street address. For example, some businesses might need to know about Locations on which no buildings have yet been erected. If you’re construction company and you’re going to build houses you need to be able to get to site and know where it is. If they are going to put in the infrastructure, for example, electricity companies, sewage companies or water companies, need to be able to find their way to these Locations.

Then there are also Locations on large manufacturing sites that might not have street addresses. For example, a petrochemical company might have a distillation plant or a workshop or head office or fire department, these are Locations that need to be able to be uniquely identified in some way so that people can get to them. Not just the people who work on the plant, it could be you have to call services from outside, for example, the fire or ambulance services, so as they can turn up and everybody can get to the right place at the right time.
Then there could be high rise multi-use buildings. How do you ‘Address’ those? Or remote rural Locations, for example, where you could have a telephone box in a remote area, how do you Address that? Or an electricity substation that you need to be able to get to, or a reservoir and many, many more. I’ll cover these in much more detail in the Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management Master Class, on 25th and 26th of April.
MDM Master Class
I’m doing two sessions that will suit a lot of different time zones round the globe on those two days. Pick the one that suits you best. It’s only $27 to enrol, but I guarantee you’ll get a really good return on your investment in terms of really enlightening information and very powerful techniques. And if after the Master Class you don’t feel you have, I’ll refund your fee in full.

Click here to find out more detail or enrol for this Master Class.

I look forward to connecting to you in my next MDM post in a couple of day’s time, in which I’m going to talk about really innovative ways looking at Product in MDM. And explain how, if you model Product correctly, it can be very, very powerful.

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All Master Data Management (MDM) activities should produce real business benefits. If not, you should stop them as they are only consuming time, money and other resources.

In this post, I’m going to talk about three elements from my technique of Multi-Dimensional MDM that will bring real business benefits to any enterprise that implements them, these are Party, Party Role and Party Relationship.

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All business in every enterprise is done with another Party. This Party could be an individual or it could be another enterprise.
For example, when an enterprise sells a product to another person or organisation (another Party), then that Party takes on the Party Role of Customer.

Likewise, if an enterprise purchases something from another person or organisation (another Party), then that Party takes on the Party Role of Supplier.
These Party Roles are very important and very powerful because they enable you to hold Customer or Supplier (Party) data once and only once. Let me explain how they achieve this.
Imagine that a telecoms company sells services to a company called ABC and also purchases marketing services from ABC. In nearly all present day enterprises, this would immediately create duplicate information about ABC in (at least) two separate information systems – one being the sales system and one being the purchasing system. From the time this happens, the data in both systems begins to diverge – and this is repeated for hundreds, if not thousands of party records for any enterprise of any reasonable size.
This is where the power of the concept of Party comes in.  Instead of creating one record for ABC in the sales system and then another record for ABC in the purchasing system, the Party concept creates a single record for Party in a centralised Party System and links are made to this single record from the sales and purchasing systems – in which the Party is now merely playing the Roles of ‘Customer’ and ‘Supplier’.
This approach totally eliminates duplication of Party data and maintains its integrity. Whenever a change is made to Party data in the Party System, that change is immediately reflected in all other systems that link to the Party System.
Let’s look at another role that a Party can play. Whenever an enterprise employs a person, they immediately take on the Role of Employee. However, instead of creating a record for the person in the HR system, a record is created in the Party System and the HR system links to this central record.

This structure is very powerful and critical in some enterprises. Insurance companies are a good example as here, a person could legitimately play very many roles, such as employee, purchaser, guarantor, beneficiary, witness, litigant, defendant, etc.
Having the concept of Party Roles also enables the enterprise to clearly see all of the commercial relationships that the enterprise has with other Parties and so explore possible new commercial opportunities with these Parties.
Another really powerful structure that goes with Party and Party Role is Party Relationship.

Knowing what the relationship is between Parties offers benefits ranging from new commercial opportunities to those of minimising risk for the enterprise.
On the sales side, knowing about relationships between parties with whom you currently do business gives you a really powerful opportunity of cross-selling or of consolidating your purchasing.
On the other side of the coin, knowing the relationship between parties can also minimise risk for the enterprise. For example, if you’re selling services to businesses  and they’re all running behind on their payments (individually this might not be a big risk) but, if you can see that they are all related to each other and they’re all running behind, then you might think that this is not sustainable and pull the plug.
I’ve just gone quickly through these examples but will be covering them in much greater detail in the Master Class on Business-Driven Multi-Dimensional MDM that I’m running at the end of April 2107. This Master Class is designed both for business executives and MDM consultants and practitioners. It’s all about the business benefits of MDM, which enable executives to see what these benefits can be and enable practitioners and consultants to better realise how they can deliver these benefits to the executive.

Click on this link to find out more about this Master Class or to book your session. 

It’s $27 to enrol. I guarantee you will get a really good return on your investment in terms of enlightening information and powerful techniques. If you don’t feel you have, then I will, in fact, refund your money in full.
In my next post, I will tell you about two other very powerful elements from Multi-Dimensional MDM that bring real commercial benefits to any enterprise that implements them.
If you enjoyed this post, then please share, tag, like or leave a comment. I would love to hear from you.

Welcome to this second previewpost on the live 90 minute Master Class on Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management that I will be running on April 26 2017.
In this post I’d like to introduce you to the seven key elements that make Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management so powerful, they are:

• Party
• Party Relationship
• Party Role
• Location
• Location Usage
• Product
• Asset

You will notice that none of the above is ‘Customer’ or ‘Supplier’ which so many people in the worlds of MDM and CRM mistakenly believe to be the Master Entities.
During this Master Class I will explain exactly why ‘Customer’ and ‘Supplier’ ought not treated as Master Entities and show the power that knowing this will bring to your MDM and CRM solutions in enterprises.
In my next previewing post on this Master Class, I will introduce the very powerful elements of Party and Party Relationship and explain how they enable an enterprise to achieve so much more in the areas of sales, marketing and risk management.
This live 90 minute Master Class will take place on 26 April 2017 and the enrolment fee is set at the very special price of just US$27. I Guarantee that you will get an amazing return on your investment in terms of powerful new knowledge – or I’ll refund your money.

You can enrol in either of the live classes that I will be running on 26 April. Just select the time that suits you from the images on the right of this page and go to the IMM Store to purchase your seat.

If you know of any friend or colleague who would benefit from attending this Master Class, then please share this link with them.
If you have any question on the Master Class, then please ask it by leaving a comment below. I would love to hear from you.

Do you work in the worlds of Master Data Management or in Customer Relationship Management?
Are you frustrated with the conventional approach to these subjects because it fails to deliver the hoped for improvements?
If so, you will love the live 90 minute Master Class that I am running on April 26 2017.
In this live class I will introduce you to a new and very powerful method that I call Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management that will enable you to rethink your whole approach to MDM and CRM.
This Master Class is suitable for both novices and experts, as it starts with the basics by redefining fundamental definitions and goes on to demonstrate a complete set of powerful techniques that will enable you to bring real benefits to your enterprise.
It asks and answers basic, yet critical questions, such as:

• What is Master Data and why do you need to manage it?
• How is Master Data different from other data and where does it fit in with this other data – or does it?
• What does Master Data Management have to do with Customer Relationship Management?
• Does it make sense to deal with these two subjects in the same Master Class?
• Is Master Data Management a one-off exercise or do you need to do it forever?

As I said, this live 90 minute Master Class will take place on 26 April 2017  at the very special price of only $27. I Guarantee that you will get an amazing return on your investment in terms of powerful new knowledge, or I’ll give you your money back.
In the next short video introducing this Master Class I will introduce you to all of the elements of Multi-Dimensional Master Data Management – several of which you will not have heard mentioned in the mainstream worlds of MDM and CRM.
If you know of any friend or colleague who would find this master Class to be of value, then please share this link with them.
If you have a question about the Master Class, then please do not hesitate to ask it by leaving a comment below. I would love to hear from you.