The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/116777
MASTER OF YOUR DOMAIN Definitions Fig 3 Transform Hub Human Resources Document Management MASTER DATA: The consistent set of attributes that can be guaranteed to describe master entities uniformly in all systems CRM Time Tracking PMS © IntApp, Inc. 3 MASTER ENTITIES: The core business entities shared across multiple business processes, along with their associated attributes, connections and taxonomies. In law firms, these key nouns are often clients, matters and people Recognizing these challenges and with pressure from management to increase operational efficiency, progressive firms started to implement a different architecture to share information between systems about five years ago. Instead of prioritizing systems and developing individual integrations to make systems communicate with each other, these firms prioritized types of information that were crucial for the firm's business. The new aim was to structure the flow of information between systems in a way that could jointly generate a single, consistent view of all activity associated with crucial entities (clients, matters and people). The MDM strategy has a few core components: • It identifies master entities — clients, matters and people — that are represented by different systems in different ways. • Firm management and IT define the "master data" concept for each entity that will serve as the authoritative representation. The master concept is tailored to business goals, not determined by the native structure of vertical applications. • It houses master data and attributes in a central hub, known as a master data directory (MDD) (Fig. 3). • Integrations between independent systems first pass through the MDD and are then spread to downstream systems, eliminating complexity (Fig. 3). • One system is designated as the authoritative source for each object or attribute. This source populates the MDD — and other downstream MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT: The processes and practices that allow business units and IT to collaborate to harmonize, cleanse, publish and protect master data, and ensure its consistency and accuracy across the enterprise systems — to improve quality and eliminate inconsistencies. BENEFITS FOR LAW FIRMS As with any IT initiative, the success of an MDM project depends upon buy-in from firm management. Building a reliable MDD to support a modern information strategy is a hefty project that requires time, patience, collaboration and a project road map. Firmwide support is a must for the initiative to be successful. While the specific business case for MDM will vary by firm, there are three recurring benefits that IT can consider when making the case to management. Operational Efficiency and Reduced Costs: Management often hesitates to approve complex IT initiatives because the projects last longer and cost more than scoped. The problem, of course, is that firms don't have their data in order, and they struggle to design workflows and data flows to achieve their goals. MDM makes other IT projects go faster and cost less because it adds order to disjointed data. Still, to demonstrate local wins to lawyers, many firms pitch the first stage of a long-term MDM initiative as part of a solution to a short-term problem. For example, start by using MDM to clean up user-provisioning processes, implementing an MDD to broker employee information from HR to the various downstream systems (Fig. 3). The central MDD helps update user and group data in real Peer to Peer 63