I walk into a lot of clients that look for Technology and/or Data Management to solve their problems. The thought goes that simply putting in a new system or cleaning up data will fix what is going wrong. This thought misses the root causes of what led to the issues. Technology we’ve been through many times around here, so today let’s talk Data Management.
Data Management is the idea of understanding and using the data generated across some functional area (in this case real estate). It finds the good data, identifies gaps, works to rectify bad data and generate reports. The idea is that this function is the master of the data.
However, a master without responsibility of delivery is ultimately not really master of the data. If bad data was generated in the past and the process is never fixed, then bad data will be generated in the future. Data Management can advise on fixing a process but isn’t the one responsible for fixing it. This means that Data Management is only a stop gap solution. It can fix things today but that may only serve as a mask to underlying issues that may creep up in the future and cause bigger issues than before.
Lack of real responsibility is a terrible thing. It allows someone to help without actually fixing.