“Who has responsibility internally? From my experience, when I ran a service business, we had a master data management team, and having somebody in the company that owns the data is essential.

“Most organisations I talk to buy a big piece of software to help them solve all their problems. Then you see them two years later, and they say, ‘we’re not getting the value we expected.’ They thought the application would do more for them, but more often than not, it’s because they can’t trust what’s coming out of it. In these scenarios, often, nobody owns the data internally, so nobody is accountable.

“That was always interesting for me to note because I’d speak to these orgainisations and ask who owns the data? Who has responsibility for making sure it is well managed in their organisation? All too often I’d see a lot of people shaking their head saying, ‘well, kind of nobody does in our organisation.'”

Even amongst those organisations that are really at the pinnacle of effective data use, such as medical technology manufacturer Elekta, there can be discrepancies between how data is handled across different business units. As Daniel Kingham, Vice President and Head of Service Innovation and Design, Elekta, explained.

“We have pockets of very clear ownership and pockets where ownership of the data is completely distributed, and nobody’s accountable, where everybody can edit and change information which can be a problem certainly.

“Also, in the past we’ve definitely fallen down the trap of thinking the system will solve all of our process problems and the result of that is today processes need to be evolved, because without good processes no system will overcome these issues.”

It seems that the issue is often a result of inefficient or inadequate processes. When data is required across different business units, ownership and thus responsibility can fall between the cracks. However, even within departments, if processes and protocols are not clearly defined, individuals, while working with the best of intentions, cause further data duplication, muddying the waters further.

“Another challenge that often gets overlooked is the human aspect. If someone doesn’t trust the validity of data for whatever reason, the human instinct is to create their own, because that is a record they can trust,” commented Mark Homer, Managing Partner, Field Service Associates.

For Mark Wilding, VP of Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax, the answer and perhaps the most significant barrier to effective data usage lies in ensuring global data governance.

“I think one of the biggest challenges I faced when in global operational roles was data governance,” Wilding stated.

“You may have the same master data sitting in different systems. It could be other versions of ERP. It could be Oracle, SAP Microsoft Dynamics; you’re using the data, but fundamentally, it’s global data, its global standard partners, etc. However, if you don’t have a global governance strategy, you end up with multiple variations on the data.

“Then, of course, if you try and use an analytical tool like Tableau or Power BI to create insights across these different geographies, regions or applications, you can’t because the consistency of the data and in different pockets becomes an issue.

“That was, for me, one of the biggest challenges, and I believe companies need to try to overcome this by creating a definition of what the data is. What is the data definition? What are the boundaries, the governance, and the audit policies?

“How do we define the validation rules around these aspects to try and create the ability to utilise the data effectively so that even if one country is using Infor and another country is on the Dynamics platform, for example, it doesn’t matter. Even if they have their own data warehouse that sits within each of those two ERPs, at least the consistency of the data is controlled and governed at a global level.