Use Microsoft® Visio® to create an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) model for the Human Resources Department tables in the business case attached

Master Data Management Case at Joe’s Consultants

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Business case is supporting the need for Master Data Management for Joe’s Consulting Group (Fictions Company).

Analysis of the situation and problem statement.

Joe’s Consulting group is a medium sized firm based in Arizona offering consultancy services in market research and advertising, financial management, and other service areas. Since the firm has a lot of clients and customers, it deals with loads of data- customer data, financial data, company data, market research and advertising data, and employee data. However, despite the large volume of data, the firm lacks master data management to enable it to link all of its critical data to one file in the name of a master file. As a result, there is a lack of a common reference point. Because of lack of a comprehensive master data management, data sharing is not streamlined among the firm departments and personnel.

Problem statement

Lack of a comprehensive master data management systems at Joe’s Consultants is limiting the sharing of data because of non-streamlined processes among departments and personnel. As a result, the firm is losing on many rewards and value creation that comes with effectively functional master data management systems.

Risks and Rewards.

Implementing a master data management comes with rewards and risks. We first begin by looking at the rewards. Several rewards are likely to be realized when or if Joe’s Consultants implement a comprehensive method of enabling it to link all of its critical data to a single file. Some of the rewards include improved quality of company data, consistent data classification, and improved reconciliation of data (Puzey, & Latham, 2016). In the corporate sense, rewards will include increased customer revenue and profitability, helping in the better management of inventory, increased percentage of new customers, and improved level of services. However risks expected may include: the high cost of full-scale implementation, the potential of data corruption and loss due to cyber threats or natural calamities, the need for a comprehensive data backup plan and disaster recovery plans.

Cost benefit and ROI Analysis, and Recommendations.

Implementation of master data management programs and initiatives are aimed at managing policy and organizational dependencies (Puzey, & Latham, 2016). The cost benefits of MDM implementation is not looked at from the point of the process. The ultimate MDM objective, data governance, and quality is actually to achieve a single, secure and trusted view of company data (Vilminko-Heikkinen, Vilminko-Heikkinen, Pekkola, & Pekkola, 2017). The costs associated with implementing an MDM include investing in modern technologies in different data management systems. The monetary value of the benefits, however, exceed the costs.

The following benefits will ensure maximum return on investments and higher monetary value of the benefits: the firm will derive maximum value leveraging data points across unstructured and structured to develop insights; cost control and operations excellence, data driven decisions; key contributions in bringing efficiencies in downstream such as reporting, sales, supply chain and other systems (Vilminko-Heikkinen, Vilminko-Heikkinen, Pekkola, & Pekkola, 2017). In the CBA, 20 percent of savings is likely to be made in operational costs following productivity and automation. Return on investment (ROI) will be positive based on improved customer satisfaction based on the timely availability of data, and accurate data quantity. Because of the prospects on ROI, and positive benefits compared to the costs of implementation, the firm should implement an MDM systems upgrade in a systematic way.

References.

Puzey, M., & Latham, S. (2016). Enabling operational excellence through the effective management of master data. The APPEA Journal, 56(2), 575-575.

Vilminko-Heikkinen, R., Vilminko-Heikkinen, R., Pekkola, S., & Pekkola, S. (2017). Master data management and its organizational implementation: An ethnographical study within the public sector. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 30(3), 454-475.