DSXchange

Does a master data management strategy need to done from an enterprise/corporate level to be most effective, or can it be done in a more department mode? Would a departmental mode tend to lead to the same problems that are trying to be avoided?

From a practical standpoint, often clients want to implement a departmental solution as a proof of concept prior to committing to reorganizing their business processes around centrally managed hierarchies and reporting dimensions.

Fundamentally, an enterprise's implementation of a dimension server is more difficult from a business process change perspective than from a technical perspective, because each legacy system, reporting solution and data mart/warehouse typically have staff dedicated to redundantly performing maintenance to their respective systems as the business changes. Finding a management sponsor with the authority and desire to force the enterprise to manage change proactively is much more difficult than implementing a configurable tool that can encapsulate all of the source and consumer system's maintenance constraints.

As to the question at hand, a departmental solution is much easier to implement but doesn't solve the fundamental issues, while an enterprise implementation usually results in a great return on investment but also requires business process reengineering as well as data manipulation.