TDWI RESEARCH

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT

Bringing Modern
Data-Driven
Applications to
the Enterprise
By Philip Russom

Sponsored by:

tdwi.org

MARCH 2015

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT

Bringing Modern
Data-Driven
Applications to
the Enterprise
By Philip Russom

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2
FOREWORD
3
NUMBER ONE
Know the most compelling use cases for
data-driven applications
4
NUMBER TWO
Give business users the data-driven work
environment they need
4
NUMBER THREE
Integrate operational and analytic functions in
a single data-driven application
5
NUMBER FOUR
Comply with governance policies as you work
with data
5
NUMBER FIVE
Demand data-driven applications that embed
substantial data management functionality
6
NUMBER SIX
Take a modern approach to master data management
6
NUMBER SEVEN
Deploy data-driven applications on infrastructure
thats appropriate to them
7
ABOUT OUR SPONSORS

8 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

8
ABOUT TDWI RESEARCH
8
ABOUT TDWI CHECKLIST REPORTS

555 S Renton Village Place, Ste. 700

Renton, WA 98057-3295
T
F
E

425.277.9126
425.687.2842
info@tdwi.org

1TDWI RESEARCH

2015 by TDWI, a division of 1105 Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproductions in whole
or in part are prohibited except by written permission. E-mail requests or feedback to
info@tdwi.org. Product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.

tdwi.org

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT: BRINGING MODERN DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS TO THE ENTERPRISE

FOREWORD

The term data driven is bandied about nowadays by many people

in many contexts. For example, more business managers need to
make fact-based decisions and run a business by the numbers
based on reliable data and metrics that are integrated into business
processes. As new data sources come onlinefrom third-party
sources, social media, and even machinery, devices, and smartphone
appsbusiness teams need an efficient and effective way to relate
new data and leverage it to achieve organizational goals.
For managers, processes, and organizations to be truly data driven
requires going beyond the hype in the press and siloed master data
management processes. The success of consumer data-driven
applicationssuch as LinkedIn and Facebookhas shown that
frontline users can easily access, improve, analyze, and share
their data in a seamless, unified environment. The problem with
traditional process-driven applications such as legacy CRM and ERP
systems is that they place the burden of capturing analytical insight,
making decisions, and taking action on the business user. To correct
that problem and offer other benefits, modern enterprise datadriven applications (DDAs) predict and prescribe what to do next
with reliable data, relevant insights, and recommended actions.
In addition, a data-driven application:

Continuously correlates data entities (e.g., customers, partners,

products, locations) into 360-degree views that can be pivoted
from any perspective. The DDA enables business users to make
decisions and take action based on complete and fresh data, with
predictive insights made evident by revealing relationships among
multiple entities, facts, and data points.
Depends on consumer-class ease of use, as seen in LinkedIn and
Facebook, requiring little or no user training.
Supports real-time operation, collaboration with colleagues, and
broad flexibility and scalability.
Closes the loop by providing recommended actions and aligns the
results of those actions to continuously improve the next set of
recommendations.
Reveals business value for unquestionable ROI by continuously
measuring outcomes to show metrics such as cost savings,
which customers are the most profitable, and how your business
decisions are yielding results.
To help the reader select data-driven applications (DDAs) and
prepare for their use, this Checklist Report drills down into their
desirable characteristics, best practices, and use cases.

Automates business processes, problems, and opportunities

that can only be driven forward, solved, and leveraged via ample
volumes of diverse data.
Operates on diverse data from many multichannel data sources,
typically through data-as-a-service (DaaS), both inside and
outside the enterprise.
Makes information universally available across the organization
within a single application. The ideal DDA is an out-of-the-box
contextual application, with data included, that customizes each
view with accurate, timely, and relevant information based on the
role and goal of the user.
Seamlessly combines operational and analytic capabilities,
breaking down traditional silos. Analytic insights are linked
directly to the execution of specific business tasks.
Automatically generates master data, metadata, models, schema,
and graphs as the user searches, queries, and collects data.
This new, modern approach to data management keeps business
users working without burdening IT. An enterprise DDA makes
data reliable, instantly accessible, easily audited, and relevant to
business objectives.

2TDWI RESEARCH

tdwi.org

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT: BRINGING MODERN DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS TO THE ENTERPRISE

NUMBER ONE

KNOW THE MOST COMPELLING USE CASES FOR

DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS

A number of data-driven application (DDA) use cases make a safe

but rewarding starting point and are easy to build a business case
around:
Affiliation managementThis helps sales, marketing, and support
employees understand which customers know which other customers
and how they are related to various organizations. The resulting
commercial graph (akin to a social network) helps you use what you
know about an established customer to sell to an affiliated prospect.
Furthermore, understanding a customers sphere of influence has
been widely accepted by the industry as a key to increasing the
life-cycle value of a customer and generating more revenue from the
customer.
Key account management (KAM)Established applications
for customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force
automation (SFA) continue to be valuable despite their inflexible
data models and old-fashioned analytic capabilities. However, they
are not well suited to key account management (KAM). A modern
data-driven KAM application goes beyond sales-focused attributes
and the CRM/SFA life cycle by revealing real-world relationships
among customers, accounts, products, vendors, contracts, and
other entities. Data-driven KAM applications also broaden the
scope of users to include sales, marketing, compliance, and other
departments for a complete view of key accounts, tailored to the
needs of each stakeholder.
Merger and acquisitions (M&As)A successful merger includes
merging data and applications, not just merging organizations. An
established best practice is to set up a neutral clean room where
you can compare data from two or more organizations involved in a
merger. This enables a 360-degree view of all data, both pre- and
post-merger. It also helps you plan data collocation, migration,
and final consolidation. An enterprise data-driven application can
make this happen in weeks or months pre-merger, instead of the
traditionally accepted time frame of years post-merger. Furthermore,
merging data and applications with a DDA that includes automated
data management functions increases the success of data-driven
merger goals, success as operational excellence for the newly
merged organization, and up-selling and cross-selling across the
newly merged customer base.

pressures, and market pricing. For day-to-day operations involving

products, the same DDA also provides reliable and complete product
data for product hierarchies and groupings, manufacturing, and
supply chain management.
Many compelling use cases for data-driven applications are industry
specific:
Life sciencesThis industry is fighting a war on many fronts,
exacerbated by regulatory drivers that are applying pricing
pressures, an aging population that needs newer therapies,
and an R&D pipeline that is struggling to keep pace with the
innovations of the past few decades. DDAs purpose-built for life
sciences can help organizations keep ahead of shifting markets,
competition, pricing, compliance, governmental regulations, and
operational costs.
Oil and gasThe correlated, remodeled, and complete view
of multi-entity data enabled by a DDA (for geology, geography,
facilities, utilities, land owners, mineral rights, etc.) can
be leveraged for lean operations, greater production, asset
development, and growing reserves.
GovernmentA DDA can bring multiple government agencies
and other stakeholders togetherthrough a unified, trusted, and
shared data poolso they can productively coordinate and make
decisions that are actionable across a multi-agency ecosystem.
In all instances, what makes DDAs unique is the encapsulation of
deep understanding provided by internal stakeholders or third-party
industry experts. Their knowledge of the data setswith functional
and business processes fused into a DDAis ultimately what
makes the application and data relevant and effective.

Product development and product launchR&D and brand

teams need a data-driven application for consolidating, sharing,
and collaborating with product data drawn from multiple industry
and enterprise sources. This enables them to design, build, and
launch products that align with customer requirements, competitive

3TDWI RESEARCH

tdwi.org

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT: BRINGING MODERN DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS TO THE ENTERPRISE

NUMBER TWO

GIVE BUSINESS USERS THE DATA-DRIVEN WORK

ENVIRONMENT THEY NEED

High ease-of-use. The graphical user interface (GUI) of a modern

data-driven application is easy and productive when its based on
intuitive click-and-drag methods coupled with visualizations. This
enables business end users to explore data independently without
requiring the skills of technical data analysts and data scientists.
Users today expect their enterprise applications to be as easy to use
as LinkedIn and Facebook.
Unburdening IT. For too long, business users have been putting
pressure on IT, depending on IT to provision and prepare data at
every turn. Enterprise data-driven applications with high ease-ofuse can present data in a business-friendly way that enables selfservice data access, exploration, and analysis. Furthermore, DDAs
support modern master data management disciplines and control
that meet IT requirements for reliable, high-quality data. They can
also handle big-data scale through elastic computing resources.
This allows a wide range of business users to accomplish goals
faster while freeing up IT to focus on other imperatives.
Real-time performance. Data-driven applications assume that
users want the most up-to-date data, processed multiple ways,
to continuously reveal relationships. Traditional batch-mode
collection of master data, parsing of business activities, and the
discovery of networks of entities are not sufficient for todays agile
enterprise. DDAs operate at the speed of thought, using the most
reliable data for the fastest path to relevant insights
and recommended actions.
Collaboration with colleagues. Imagine a kind of crowdsourced
data development and enrichment where users annotate data
sources and curate data sets in terms of accuracy and relevance.
That information is, in turn, shared and aggregated for a communal
assessment of data. Likewise, a profile, relationship, visual, or data
set developed by one DDA user is shared enterprisewide.
Productivity and agility. DDAs make users more productive with
their daily work through predictive insights contextually relevant
to their roles and goals. They also bypass ping-ponging among
multiple tools and using not-fit-for-purpose applications. Data sets
are dynamically extensible, which means insights and prescribed
actions are continuously improving. By eliminating heavy technical
integration, DDAs free up IT to use built-in fine-grained audit and
security controls to efficiently manage and secure reliable data.

4TDWI RESEARCH

NUMBER THREE

INTEGRATE OPERATIONAL AND ANALYTIC FUNCTIONS

IN A SINGLE DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATION

One tool for multiple integrated uses. In an enterprise datadriven application, operational and analytic capabilities combine
seamlessly in a closed loop, breaking down traditional application
silos. Analytics insights are linked directly to specific business
tasks. Otherwise, business users may misinterpret data as they
try to apply analytical insights to operational activities. Unlike
analytics-only tools, when a DDA actively makes recommendations
based on correlations, the relevance to operational business tasks is
unambiguous and outcomes are specific and measurable.
Data exploration and discovery. We say analytics as if its
one monolithic thing, but its actually a process of multiple steps.
For many analysts and other users, the first step is typically data
exploration. After all, most analytic projects begin by researching
relevant data entities, such as customers in the context of churn.
Exploration leads to the discovery of data that profiles a relevant
subset, such as customers prone to a new form of churn. The
discovered subset can be polished, analyzed, visualized, and
published iteratively for enterprise use. Thats quite a few steps for
the analytic process, but an enterprise data-driven application will
automate many of these steps to create information and narrow the
focus to predictive insights and actions for frontline business users
that drive the best results.
Advanced data visualization. When it comes to data-driven
applications, a picture is indeed worth a thousand wordsor
numbers. For this reason, managers and data analysts demand
dashboards and visualization tools so they can use graphic elements
instead of actual numbers or tables whenever possible. It has become
de rigueur that modern tools support simple charts (pie, bar, and line)
as well as advanced forms of data visualization (hot maps, histograms,
scatterplots, and networks). DDAs generate visual graphs based on
contextual analysis of the data. Relevant information is continuously
presented and refreshed based on the most up-to-date data.
Richer data for richer insights. Advanced analyses make
correlations among data points drawn from many sources,
including traditional enterprise data, new big data, and social
media sources. Pulling data from multiple sources for the sake of
analytic correlations is being done more frequently today through
distributed queries (sometimes called data federation). To avoid
enterprise myopia, many organizations acquire additional data
about their customers and partners from Internet-based and thirdparty sources, so they learn about these entities outside the context
of their enterprise. Modern DDAs can access and integrate multisourced data on the fly, then automatically cleanse, match, and
merge that information for the greatest reliability when performing
analysis and generating recommendations.

tdwi.org

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT: BRINGING MODERN DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS TO THE ENTERPRISE

NUMBER FOUR

COMPLY WITH GOVERNANCE POLICIES AS YOU WORK

WITH DATA

NUMBER FIVE

DEMAND DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS THAT EMBED

SUBSTANTIAL DATA MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONALITY

Simpler governance and compliance. Compared to using multiple

tools and applications, a single tool or app is easier to monitor and
police to assure that users comply with both internal and external
rules for data access, alteration, use, and distribution, as seen in
HIPAA regulations. Related data-driven governance and compliance
issues (such as security and privacy) are simpler, too.

Dont scrimp on data management. Analyses, reports, and

decisions are only as good as the data they are fed. Dont just
move data; improve data. In other words, aggregating from multiple
sources is an important first step. For the best analytics and
business outcomes, however, improve datas structure and quality as
well as its metadata and master data.

Data standards. Many data governance programs are not only

about compliance issues around data; they also establish and police
enterprisewide technical standards for datas structure, quality, and
condition. Standards control data models, schema, data-quality
metrics, name-and-address cleansing, and master or reference data.
As a data-driven application performs automatic data management
(as described in a later section of this report), users can configure
the DDA so it complies with and enforces the data standards set by
a data governance board or other organizational team.

Embed data management (DM) in a data-driven application.

The traditional approach deploys a standalone DM tool that must be
integrated with DDAs and other systems. Integrating the two (along
with analytics and other functions) in a single tool reduces costs,
minimizes training, speeds development, and simplifies governance
and standards.

Compliance on the fly. A modern DDA improves datas structure

and condition as a data analyst or other user explores and discovers
data. Although this is happening in near time, a DDA can assure
compliance with regulations and data standards in real time as data
is being created or modified.
Data lineage. Exploring, discovering, and analyzing datawith an
insight based on a polished data set at the end of the process
tends to move a lot of data around. However, an enterprise DDA will
keep track of where data came from and how it was merged and
transformed. This kind of data lineage information is critical to
answering important business questions, such as:
Before I make a decision and take action, where did the data
come from so I can judge for myself how reliable the sources are?
Before we commit to the customer profile you developed, how did
you merge and transform data to discover that particular segment
of our customer base?
As an auditing measure, what data sets do you access in your
job? How do you use or distribute the data youre accessing?

Eschew myopia by acquiring data from outside the enterprise.

Dont expect to construct a complete view of a customer or partner
with enterprise data alone. A modern data-driven application should
be able to source data from third parties and public data sources
using data-as-a-service (DaaS), including social media in real time.
Support data exploration and discovery. These are critical first
steps in any analytic process, even when analytics feeds directly
into operational work. In organizations beset with new big data,
exploration is mandatory just to get to know the data. Hence,
exploration and discovery should be integral to the data-driven
application, augmented with on-demand search and federated
access across data sets.
Enable the business user to do data management. The real point
of embedded data management is so the business user can do most
of it, independent of IT or data warehouse specialists. Without that
independence, DDA users work is delayed, while other IT projects
are disrupted. Hence, data management embedded in a DDA is
better for everyones productivity.
Automate data management whenever possible. As the user
explores data, discovers valuable insights, and collects data,
the tool should automatically track this activity and generate
metadata and data sets that comply with established enterprise
data standards. This both improves data and provides an audit trail
documenting where data came from.
Expect multiple data management approaches. A truly good
data-driven application will go beyond the usual support of
relational data and queries via SQL. It will also support Google-style
free-text search, tagging, graphing, linking, and clustering, among
other tasks.

5TDWI RESEARCH

tdwi.org

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT: BRINGING MODERN DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS TO THE ENTERPRISE

NUMBER SIX

TAKE A MODERN APPROACH TO MASTER DATA

MANAGEMENT

Here are a few ways a data-driven application can enable a modern

approach to master data management (MDM):
Build each DDA on MDM principles. Instead of being an
afterthought, MDM functions should be an integral part of an
applications initial design. After all, most business applications are
focused on managing a particular business entity (or a short list of
them) such as customers, prospects, partners, products, supplies,
assets, and financials, as well as their corresponding transactions
and interactions.
Define any data entity on the fly. As users explore data and
discover entities of interest, the tool should register these
automatically by both defining and classifying new entities
appropriately. Without this essential MDM functionality, business
users cannot accurately identify and correlate new data, which, in
turn, leads to bogus apples-to-oranges correlations.
Enable collaborative curation. Your field teams meet face-to-face
with customers every day and can provide the most up-to-date
information. Crowdsourced or social curation can allow you to turn
your sales reps into valuable data quality experts.
Execute MDM continuously. As data sets are loaded, query results
are extracted, and users access and explore more data, the tool
should adjust metadata, indices, master data sets, reference data,
and standardize data. Because MDM is performed automatically,
users keep working without IT intervention, and DDA-recommended
actions improve as the app learns and classifies more instances of
customers, partners, and other entities.

NUMBER SEVEN

DEPLOY DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS ON

INFRASTRUCTURE THATS APPROPRIATE TO THEM

Elastic clouds are strongly recommended. The virtualized server

farms of a cloud (regardless of cloud type) elastically provision CPU
and storage resources as data exploration, analytic sandboxes,
analytic processing, and continuous data management demand
them. As these workloads subside, the cloud automatically recoups
platform resources and allocates them to other workloads. This
assures linear scalability and high performance for data-driven
processes without needing tedious capacity planning or overbuilding for peak loads.
Public clouds are gaining adoption. Many users have serious
concerns about the security of their data on a public cloud
(sometimes called off-premises or third-party clouds), plus the
technical challenge of moving data onto and off of clouds. Yet recent
TDWI surveys show users in numerous industries adopting clouds of
various types. As user best practices for clouds are better known,
more vendor tools are optimized for clouds, and security, reliability,
performance, and economic characteristics of clouds improve.
Adopting a cloud-based application and/or data service is
quick and easy compared to traditional implementations. In
just a few days, you can acquire a software-as-a-service license
from a third-party cloud provider, integrate data with it, and start
using application and data functionality you didnt have before.
A traditional implementation for similar functionality at best
typically takes weeks or months. This is the kind of kick-start that
organizations need when embracing new big data and new business
requirements for analytics. Using a third-party cloud also alleviates
risky and time-consuming IT work for system integration.

Make MDM agnostic about data domains. We need MDM solutions

to see all data as one domain (or one universal entity), thereby
avoiding non-productive arguments over how to define each domain
and how to integrate multiple data domains. That would also help
users avoid redundant tooling for each domain (which is all too
common today), thereby reducing costs, increasing consistency, and
enabling cross-domain insights.
Apply MDM to new and big data. As discussed earlier, many new
data sources are bringing unstructured and non-relational data into
the enterprise. If organizations are to make accurate connections
across information in old and new data sets, applications must be
able to parse a wide range of data types yet still recognize entities
for MDM purposes.

6TDWI RESEARCH

tdwi.org

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT: BRINGING MODERN DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS TO THE ENTERPRISE

ABOUT OUR SPONSORS

www.cognizant.com

www.reltio.com

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information

technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services
dedicated to helping the worlds leading companies build stronger
businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant
combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation,
deep industry and business process expertise, and a global,
collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over
75 development and delivery centers worldwide and approximately
211,000 employees as of January 1, 2015, Cognizant is a member
of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the
Fortune 500. Cognizant is also ranked among the top-performing
and fastest-growing companies in the world. Visit us online at
www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: @Cognizant.

Reltio delivers reliable data, relevant insights, and recommended

actions so companies can be right faster. Reltio Cloud combines
data-driven applications with modern data management for better
planning, customer engagement, and risk management.

Our solutions cover the life cycle of information utilization, from

ideation to implementation to value creation. Cognizant consultants
help define your MDM strategy and solution architecture. We then
help identify and combine the types of data available within your
company and from outside sourcesincluding social mediato
create a Data to Foresight continuum.

IT streamlines data management for a complete view across

all sources and formats at scale, while sales, marketing, and
compliance teams use data-driven applications to predict,
collaborate, and respond to opportunities in real time.
Reltio manages all data types including multi-domain master
data, transaction and interaction data, as well as third-party,
public, and social data. Data is fused into a new breed of datadriven applications that business teams love to use every day. By
combining operational and analytical silos, teams can continuously
collaborate to improve the reliability of information, receive
recommendations relevant to their goals, and take immediate action,
all within the same application.
Companies of all sizes, including leading Fortune 500 companies
in healthcare and life sciences, distribution, and retail rely on
Reltio. Reltio has several partnerships with leading third-party data
providers, systems integrators, and solution partners.
For more information, visit www.reltio.com.

7TDWI RESEARCH

tdwi.org

TDWI CHECKLIST REPORT: BRINGING MODERN DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS TO THE ENTERPRISE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Russom is director of TDWI Research for data management

and oversees many of TDWIs research-oriented publications,
services, and events. He is a well-known figure in data warehousing
and business intelligence, having published over 500 research
reports, magazine articles, opinion columns, speeches, Webinars,
and more. Before joining TDWI in 2005, Russom was an industry
analyst covering BI at Forrester Research and Giga Information
Group. He also ran his own business as an independent industry
analyst and BI consultant and was a contributing editor with
leading IT magazines. Before that, Russom worked in technical and
marketing positions for various database vendors. You can reach
him at prussom@tdwi.org, @prussom on Twitter, and on LinkedIn at
linkedin.com/in/philiprussom.

ABOUT TDWI RESEARCH

TDWI Research provides research and advice for data professionals

worldwide. TDWI Research focuses exclusively on business
intelligence, data warehousing, and analytics issues and teams up
with industry thought leaders and practitioners to deliver both broad
and deep understanding of the business and technical challenges
surrounding the deployment and use of business intelligence,
data warehousing, and analytics solutions. TDWI Research offers
in-depth research reports, commentary, inquiry services, and topical
conferences as well as strategic planning services to user and
vendor organizations.

ABOUT TDWI CHECKLIST REPORTS

TDWI Checklist Reports provide an overview of success factors for

a specific project in business intelligence, data warehousing, or
a related data management discipline. Companies may use this
overview to get organized before beginning a project or to identify
goals and areas of improvement for current projects.

8TDWI RESEARCH

tdwi.org