Data management is the most crucial challenge facing modern businesses. Old data must be moved, new systems maintained, but, most importantly, all information must be completely utilized for maximum benefit. Data Migration Resources (DMR) was founded in response to this pervasive gap.
“We continued to see the Fortune 500 companies struggle with the complexities of managing data, even after they partnered with some of the largest system integrators in the world. This struggle often translated to difficult system conversions, poor trust in reporting, and incomplete data used in decision making at the highest levels of the organization,” says Ryan Rodenburg, Founder and CEO, DMR.
DMR has helped some of the world’s leading retailers with this data challenge. “The retail CIO is consistently asked to be a modern-day alchemist— converting raw data into ever more powerful business strategies,” remarks Jason Thompson, Partner, DMR. “They are tasked with using enterprise data to integrate sales channels, to optimize supplier relationships, and to improve customer experiences. This is easier said than done.”
Many large organizations struggle to understand all the data they collect. They are often laser-focused on key metrics from standard data sources which represents perhaps 5 percent to 10 percent of the total data that is already available for transformation and consumption. “They very likely have no awareness about 80 percent to 90 percent of the data assets that already exist within their organization,” comments Rodenburg.
DMR’s flagship data management suite Concento is intended to solve this problem of “unknown knowns.” “We centralize hundreds or thousands of data definitions. We identify the different data objects, tables, and elements that comprise the enterprise data, and we situation those definitions in their business context, including business processes, data standards, and lineage. Then we make it visible to key stakeholders—business process owners, data stewards, analysts, and developers,” explains Thompson.
DMR essentially has two categories of clients: the “firefighting” projects and the uneventful projects. For example, they were brought into a large SAP implementation at a $7.5 billion multi-channel fashion retailer with hundreds of sites worldwide.
We identify the different data objects, tables, and elements that comprise the enterprise data, and we situation those definitions in their business context
“When we arrived, the data delivery was ‘red’ and was impacting the entire program. Three months later, we were in recovery mode and nine months later the client went live with the first of a series of highly successful deployments,” says Rodenburg. In other cases, DMR is introduced to project opportunities before any trouble begins. “These projects are generally a lot less exciting but also a lot less painful for our clients,” adds Rodenburg.
DMR fundamentally believes that data management will be a deciding factor between the winners and losers in the next century. “Some organizations will create a next generation data management competency,” says Thompson. “They will generate insights and opportunities from their data. From the outside, it will seem like they are magically seeing the invisible. But in many cases, they will just be exploiting the raw data that they have possessed for years. DMR will continue to position itself as a partner to those organizations that are ready to exploit their data for new purposes.”
Rodenburg partially attributes DMR’s success to its fitness-enthusiast culture. “We have a lot of runners at DMR. Running requires discipline. So does data. Anyone can run a mile on an afternoon and anyone can clean up the data in an Excel spreadsheet. The challenge is scale—running further and faster than you have run before. Scale requires discipline, repetition, and methodology. This is probably the most unique factor that we bring to our clients.”
